Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  “Yes, Phee. I’m sorry. Kai, too. I’m so sorry.”

  Phoenix succumbed to her sobs. By the time she remembered Carlos again, he had said nothing but I’m sorry for twenty minutes, sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish. Lo siento, Phoenix. Sometimes he sobbed, too. Carlos’s face was shiny with his tears as he reminded her of the things she should be grateful for. Serena and Ronn were fine. The kids from the choir were fine. She might have lost more of her family that day. Sarge died knowing she was safe.

  When she nearly threw up, he forced her to take sips from a protein drink. The bitter chocolate taste made her feel sick, but she drank it because Carlos wanted her to. He didn’t know she didn’t like chocolate yet, but he would learn. Besides, she needed the protein, because she felt too weak to stand. She had nearly died, after all.

  “Where were you?” Carlos said. “With Scott?”

  “He’s gone now,” she said. But she couldn’t mourn Scott, because his leaving was long overdue. Not like Sarge. Her father was gone early, ripped away.

  “Will you stay here, Phee? Is it over?”

  Phoenix was about to say I hope so when she saw the Rosenkranz. The blighted piano had been mauled by its journey, trailing her. It had never given up.

  Tremors took control of her limbs.

  “The psychic, Johnita, told us to bring the piano to you,” Carlos said, wrapping his arms around her more tightly. “I’m sorry to scare you. She said you would know what to do.”

  Phoenix almost laughed, but it came out as a sob. She was so tired, the idea of doing anything made her cry. How gracious of the Queen Pychic to make that decree! Phoenix knew what to do, all right. She just doubted that she had the strength, or that the piano would allow it.

  “If it scares you, I’ll take you where you can’t see it,” Carlos said.

  “My bed, please.” That would be enough, for now. All she wanted was rest.

  “I don’t think we should go back there, Phee. It was so cold—”

  “That doesn’t matter. I’m here now.” She should have died in that bed, but she hadn’t. She could die anywhere. The bed wasn’t to blame. She needed to lie down beneath her sheets.

  Without further argument, Carlos lifted her until her bare feet dangled over his arm. He took her closer to the piano at first, and she closed her eyes when they walked past because the sight of it exhausted her. She didn’t open her eyes until she felt Carlos take her around a corner.

  This was a bedroom, and except for the flypaper, it was lovely. The Rosenkranz was safely out of her sight.

  After Carlos helped her put on her gown to keep her warm, he picked up the telephone and pushed her buzzer, trying to reach someone. Phoenix held Carlos’s hand so he wouldn’t consider leaving her room. He wouldn’t like what he would find if he went searching for her doctor, or for her nurse.

  “This is bullshit. I haven’t been able to reach anybody since that piano got here,” he said, frustrated. “I’m trying to catch Gloria. She’s on her way to the airport.”

  “Where’s Gloria going?” Phoenix said. She missed her cousin. She remembered things from where she’d been, but the here and now was beyond her. Every small detail was a mystery.

  “Atlanta.” Carlos held her face. “Your father’s funeral is tomorrow, Phee.”

  Phoenix didn’t know how much time she lost to sobbing after that. The word funeral made it impossible to think of conversation, even about the piano. Especially about the piano.

  Sleeping was the only way to stop crying, so she slept between her questions to Carlos and his gentle answers as he lay beside her in the tiny twin-sized bed, holding her. While Carlos stroked her, she sipped at the knowledge, then slept to forget. This went on for hours, but the time passed as minutes to her.

  When Phoenix woke up again, she was shivering.

  Her fingers flew to her forearms, where she pinched her biceps and skin, clinging to them.

  You like Magnums, motherfucker? The memory of an explosion rang in her ears, fresh as new, and old tears she hadn’t shed before falling asleep reemerged, still warm. Phoenix wiped her face with her tears and held her cheeks a long time, stifling a sob. Her throat hurt. Crying made its own pain, and she was tired of hurting. She was too weak to hurt like this.

  She saw Carlos’s sleeping face across from her, at the edge of her pillow. In sleep, his assuring mask was gone.

  Phoenix leaned over, lightly kissing his lips. “Rest, baby,” she whispered.

  She didn’t want to wake Carlos. Bless him for being here, but she needed time free of his stroking and coddling. As hard as it was to return to her skin and the memory of the Osiris, she had other things to remember. More pressing things.

  You’ve got to be about the revolution, Phee.

  It was 4:00 A.M., the digital clock on her night table said. Six hours since Carlos had woken her up the first time. Six hours wasted.

  Moving gently, Phoenix slipped from beneath Carlos’s arm and climbed from the bed, her bare feet sinking into the carpet. She felt all of her blood rush to her legs, and they tingled, nearly buckling at the knees because she hadn’t walked for days. When dizziness made her sway, she steadied herself with her hand against the mattress, her eyes squeezed shut.

  Please let me go. Not now. Please let it be over.

  Carlos had forced down that protein drink, but she was still unaccustomed to her skin, she realized. Doubt and hurt tried to force Phoenix back into bed with Carlos, but she made herself keep standing. She might already have slept through her chance to be free.

  Once Phoenix took her first unsteady step, the others came more easily as her legs remembered how to walk. She made her way lightly across the floor, soundless, batting away the hanging flypaper that brushed the side of her face. Flies always came where Death was near.

  All of the pieces were in place: The New York asylum. The Rosenkranz. Her beloved alone at her bedside. Her death would follow Scott’s, a coda. If she didn’t change the last of her destiny the way she had changed Scott’s on his deathbed, today was her dying day.

  Carlos had interrupted the momentum of her dying, but today was the day. Her obituary was already written somewhere: Eccentric rocker-turned–R&B singer Phoenix Smalls, dead from shock at twenty four after seeing her father gunned down, clipped before she could fly. Such things happened with musicians, since their music took them so close to the laughter and light.

  Not that she was afraid to die. She’d been places she didn’t have words for that made all that drama silly, even if knowing that couldn’t keep her from hurting over Sarge. The dying part wouldn’t bother her the way her death would bother Carlos. And Mom. And Gloria and Serena.

  She had to keep on living to spare them the pain. Her family had enough tears.

  And mostly, her dying felt wrong. Scott didn’t need the piano anymore. Scott’s ghost was gone. She’d felt Scott Leap, and the Leap was clean, not halfway. He was free, like Sarge. Scott had breathed out his anger at the end—she’d felt it expel in a hot wind—so whatever anger was still locked in his Rosenkranz didn’t belong here. It was a relic that didn’t know its curse was gone. Like all antiques, the piano had outlived its owner.

  Her escape should be clean, too. It was only right.

  Holding the wall for support, Phoenix peeked around the corner to the other side of her suite. The piano hadn’t moved, a dark spot against the wall. Even moonlight didn’t reach it.

  Without the spell of its novelty to draw her to it, Phoenix felt repelled. The piano didn’t give off any odor she could detect, but it should. This piano was rotting in a way other pianos didn’t, and it wasn’t just the wood going sour. The Rosenkranz was rotting because of what lived inside of it. The Rosenkranz had been born angry, before Scott ever crossed its path.

  No wonder she had recognized it when she was so young! It had been sent to find her, still trying to wed her to Scott, in death. Still hunting the glimmer of Freddie that lived in her.

  But not after ton
ight. Ashes to ashes, amen.

  Phoenix saw Gloria’s pearl-colored lighter on the coffee table and snatched it up. You’ve always got my back, cuz, she thought. But she would need more than a lighter.

  Dropping the lighter into the large pocket of her gown, Phoenix fumbled with the doors in her suite, opening a closet, then the door to the empty hallway before she found the bathroom hidden in an alcove. When she flipped on the light switch, the makeup mirror’s brightness dazed her. Slowly, the room unveiled its marble floor, modernist sculptures and well-maintained plants, Ronn’s gift to her. Sanctuary.

  Phoenix glanced at herself in the mirror, but only once. She was so glad she remembered, she didn’t mind that her hair hadn’t been combed in days and that she could hardly see Sarge in her face because the lights made her so pallid. She was here, and she remembered.

  I’m Phoenix Smalls. The knowledge was electrifying.

  The cabinet under the sink was empty, but her family members had left things on the counter she thought she could use: Nail polish remover. A small bottle of alcohol. A brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Something would work. She had options now.

  When Phoenix went back to the dark living room, she was glad the piano was waiting. Disappearing was the least of what it could do.

  “If you’d been gone, I would have found you again,” Phoenix whispered. “Believe it.”

  Something scuttled inside the piano, barely plucking one of the strings. The high G.

  Plaintive, almost simpering.

  Phoenix stood over the piano, gazing at the gaps where keytops were missing on the keys, brown as coffee. In the light from the bathroom, the piano’s case looked flaky to her, like it could rub off on her hands. She would have to touch it, to move it. She couldn’t burn it here.

  Pushing the piano was an ordeal. Phoenix was so enamored of her newly restored muscle and skin that she’d forgotten she was five-foot-seven and 130 pounds, so the piano outweighed her. People her size did not move pianos alone, she remembered.

  Not that she would let that stop her.

  Phoenix leaned her back and tailbone against the end of the piano, pushing off the wall with her bare feet. The piano ignored her. It couldn’t be this heavy, could it? Could it treat her like she wasn’t here, like the spirit she’d been in Scott’s world? Phoenix gave another push, throwing herself back hard against the piano.

  The piano inched forward. The carpeting in the living room wasn’t as plush as the carpeting in her bedroom area, or she would have failed before she began, but she felt it move. Apparently, there were wheels hidden down there, and she’d given them some momentum.

  Already panting, Phoenix gazed across the length of the suite, which seemed to have grown. The expanse between where she stood and the door to the hallway—the carpeted hallway, she remembered—looked like an odyssey. Not to mention the journey to the elevator, which could take twice as long. At this rate, she would be moving this piano until daylight.

  So you’d better get effing started, she thought, and pushed against the piano again.

  Phoenix’s crawl across the suite with the piano took twenty minutes. Her body had felt weak before, but there were times now she nearly fell. Her wet skin clung to her gown’s Egyptian cotton. She was breathing as hard as she would be if she were running. But the piano was moving. She wasn’t supposed to be able to move it, but she could.

  “Phee, what are you doing?”

  Carlos sounded breathless too. He had bounded from bed, still naked. His eyes were so wide, he must have been afraid she had vanished into the air. And it was almost true. Almost.

  “I’m getting rid of this,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to set the building on fire. People might get hurt. The piano would like that.”

  For a moment, Carlos’s face stayed frozen, as if he hadn’t heard her. Then he understood, shaking his head as if he was trying to clear his ears. “You want to burn it? Wait. Stop.” He disappeared into her bedroom, and when he came back he was climbing into his jeans. He sounded groggier than she did, gently taking her arm to pull her toward him. “Hon, wait…You’re hurting yourself, Phee.”

  “I have to burn it, Carlos. Tonight.”

  This was another reason she had left him sleeping, she remembered. Carlos had a convincing way about him. Already, his soothing voice was plying her, making her want to rest. “Shhhhh. Yes, linda, si, I agree with you, the piano should be burned. Fine. We’ll get movers to take it to a dump somewhere and—”

  “It has to be tonight. It has to be me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this is the day, Carlos. This is the day I die. I should be dead already.”

  Carlos’s face moved closer to hers, fully illuminated by the light from the bathroom. His eyes were so tired they were red, but they were alert on her. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Carlos’s jaw clenched, hardening. He did know.

  “Why do you have to do burn it? Let me do it,” Carlos said quietly.

  “Because Scott told me to. He gave me permission, and I’m the one who has to do it. He asked Lottie to, but she couldn’t understand him. Anyway, you know Lottie—she didn’t have the heart. She donated it to the hospital and kept the Steinway—she’d never liked the Rosenkranz in her house, even if she never said so—but she could never destroy anything of Scott’s. It wasn’t in her. Everything was lost after Lottie died.”

  Phoenix realized she was babbling when she saw the look on Carlos’s face. There was a lot more she wanted to tell him about Scott and Lottie, but she could rescue the present, not the past. Carlos’s eyes were retreating, she realized. He was pulling away. He didn’t want to know.

  “We should take the piano to the alley, so no one will get hurt,” Phoenix said. “Scott found it in an alley. Remember? That’s where it belongs.”

  “Why would I remember that? Hon, let me find your doctor. If you’ll just stay right here, I can go look—”

  “There isn’t anyone here tonight, Carlos. You already know that, and you know what it means. Don’t pretend you’re anyplace you’ve ever been.”

  Carlos’s face grew stony. “What I really know is that you’ve suffered a trauma. You have to appreciate that, Phee. A trauma like this can trigger strange ideas. Strange thoughts.”

  “You, of all people, know I’m not crazy.” She pitied Carlos for his fear.

  Carlos raised his palm. “I’m not using that word—that’s an ugly word. But you might be confused. I’m willing to listen to you if you’re willing to listen to me.”

  She closed her eyes, praying for patience. It was bothersome to have to explain things. “If you’re right and I’m just confused, then worst-case scenario is, we drag this piano out to an alley and I light it on fire and burn it to Hell. If I’m right, worst-case scenario is, I go back to sleep like nothing is up and I never open my eyes again. If you were me, which one would you choose?”

  Carlos blinked. He didn’t have to answer.

  “That’s what I thought,” Phoenix said. “So are you going to help me move this or not? If we don’t hurry, it’ll be gone. We might not find it again.”

  Carlos stared down at the piano, and his repulsion was naked on his face. He didn’t move.

  “It scares you,” she said. “Even if you don’t know what to call it.”

  Carlos nodded. Slowly, his fingers became fists. “It scares the shit out of me, Phee.”

  How could she explain? Scott was very bitter, at the end, and bitterness had a long life. All curses began with bitterness, with fear just underneath. She might be able to capture it in music if she wrote a song about it, but for now she didn’t have the language, either.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she said. His face told her he loved her enough to stay with her although he was afraid. He was steadfast in his devotion, like always.

  “Shhhhh. Grab your end,” Carlos said. He surveyed the piano, the
n squeezed past it to the other side of the doorway, to the hall. “You push, I’ll pull.”

  His plan sounded like a miracle in the making.

  When Carlos touched the piano, he felt something slither beneath his palm, an aberration the size of a goldfish scurrying inside the wood that made his hand jerk away. Carlos somehow stifled his cry, plugging his throat just as he was about to vomit.

  Phoenix was right. He knew what the piano was. He was the Catholic-slash-Baptist boy who’d stopped believing in God only because he wanted to stop believing in Hell, and tonight some shard of Hell was at his fingertips, beyond recantation. You’re both already dead, so what’s the rush? Somewhere, two or three centuries have passed. No one remembers you ever were.

  Carlos’s heart beat a flood through his veins as he grasped the piano hard—one hand hooked around its jutting back corner, the other behind its trunklike, carved leg.

  “On three,” he said to Phoenix. “One…two…”

  Before he reached three, the piano bucked up half an inch, scooting toward him with enough force to land on the tips of his shoes, pinching his toes. Carlos pulled free, shutting off valves in his brain to ward off the panic looking for a way to escape in him. Phoenix wasn’t strong enough to lift the piano that high from the floor! Perspiration drenched his palms.

  “That wasn’t me,” Phoenix said. “But keep pulling. At least it’s going the right way.”

  Carlos envied Phoenix for wherever she’d been, because the peace she had brought back with her was astonishing. He no longer knew her, because she had outgrown him already. He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t afraid. On the plane with Phoenix to New York, he’d remembered the Musicians’ Plane Crash Club, wondering if he would spend his last moment of life staring out of an oval airplane window while the world came crashing in, a victim of Phoenix’s providence. The idea had flipped his stomach. He’d landed safely, but her tragedy had been waiting all the same.

  “Ready?” Phoenix said. He realized she had waited to give him time to steel himself.

  Wood flaked off the piano against Carlos’s palms, damp and scaly, but he held on. “Yes,” he said, tightening his hands, a chokehold. “On three again. One…two…three…”