The Piano Tuner

by Peter Meinke

  “Sure, in the bedroom upstairs. I’ll get it for you.”

  “No need.” With the swiftness that kept catching me off guard, he stepped by me onto the stair landing. “I got to stretch these legs.” As soon as he disappeared I called Iris again; this time the phone rang, but there was no answer.

  It was totally dark by now. I peered out the window. The van squatted like an armored car in the driveway, the street-lamp throwing the trees’ shadows across it like camouflage; no one was near it. The piano tuner was using the bathroom upstairs, so I made myself a stiff drink and sat down in my study to wait him out. If only my wife were here! It came to me that she was the one who threw people out of the house—that was her job. She slammed the door in salesmen’s faces, hung up on telephone solicitors. While I had a reputation as a stinging, even withering, critic, I was not programmed for face-to-face confrontations. I had even been known to lie on the kitchen floor while the Seventh Day Adventists prowled our neighborhood with their books, leaflets, and sermons; the alternative, for me, was suffering through a dreary, hour-long lecture-debate. My wife, on the other hand, would just give them the raspberry and send them on their way.

  Now the vacuum cleaner was going, and I breathed a relieved sigh. It must be almost over. A man’s home is his castle, after all. I settled down at my typewriter and tried to concentrate on the review. After a while I was aware that the piano tuner was padding to the kitchen and back again, but I was determined to ignore him. Time passed, though I got little done. I found myself thinking about when I first met my wife. She stood at the top of a staircase in a summer dress, her eyes bright with energy and goodwill, her long legs tan and slim. No one expected more from the world than she, and right then and there I resolved that I would get it for her. Now, looking around, I realized I didn’t even have a picture of her on my desk, just one of our son shooting baskets in the driveway. I remembered how the endless bouncing of that ball had driven me crazy.

  Suddenly the piano burst into song: the piano tuner was playing, of all things, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord . . .” His low voice accompanied the piano. I stuck my checkbook into my back pocket and walked to the music room. The piano was still apart and the bottle of bourbon sat beside the vacuum cleaner; the tools were spread across the floor—I couldn’t believe the mess.

  “I thought you were finished!” I shouted. I almost felt like crying.

  “God, I love this song,” he said, his deep voice slurred. He was playing it slowly, ponderously. “Listen, what do you think of it?”

  “It’s all right,” I said, dragged in again, trying to control myself, thinking of the best way to get rid of him. “I’ve always liked the sound of the words, like vintage . . .”

  “No! No! I mean it makes me feel like flying the flag, you know what I mean? Gettin’ out there, marchin’ down the streets.” He struck the chords again.

  “Well.” I tried to smile, humoring him. “I’ve never been what you call patriotic, ‘My country right or wrong’ . . .”

  The piano tuner swiveled toward me and glared.

  “Look,” I said, “you’re through. You must be tired. I know I am. Let me pay you and you can go home.”

  “I haven’t done the felts yet; that’s a big job. That’ll cost quite a bit. I just vacuumed the old felts out of here.”

  “Look,” I repeated, “that’s enough. You’ve been here long enough today. Call us tomorrow and we’ll make an appointment for you to finish.”

  He picked up the bottle and sloshed some whiskey into his glass. He took a large sip and began to cough. His face turned purplish red. “Don’t bother me,” he said between coughs. “I’ll just put the felts in. We got a contract.”

  “What contract? There isn’t any contract, for God’s sake!” I put my hand on his shoulder, where his crumpled cigarettes were rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve, the way tough high school kids had carried them in the fifties.

  He sprang up and staggered through the debris on the floor, miraculously missing the bourbon bottle. He held me two inches above the elbow. “You just work at your desk till I finish,” he said, propelling me across the living room. The only way for me to resist would have been to twist around and hit him or to sag to the floor. Naturally, I did neither.

  “You’ll get in trouble, you know,” I said, feeling cowardly and humiliated. But he was a hundred pounds heavier than I was; what was I supposed to do? He gave me one last shove, a flick of his thick and hairy wrist, and I stumbled into my office. The door banged shut behind me and the key, always in the keyhole, turned in the lock. He had locked me in my own office! For the first time in several hours I was no longer nervous or afraid—just furious. I banged on the door, I shook it, I kicked it. Suddenly it swung open. The thought occurred to me that he was joking—this was the idiot’s sense of humor, but I was not amused.

  He was standing right there, of course, and I said, “Get out of my house,” with all the force I could muster. Like a frog snatching a fluttering moth, his right hand shot out and caught my left. He bent my little finger in on itself and the joints popped as I sank down on my knees. I felt a searing pain in my neck and dug my fingers under the piano wire he had looped over my head. He jerked me to my feet, four of my fingers still under the wire.

  “Listen, the next time you bother me I’ll pop your eyes out,” he whispered. He shoved me back into the study and locked the door.

  I lay on the floor a long time. For a while the piano tuner played as if bashing the piano with his fists. Keys were breaking, wood splintering, in some sort of devil’s symphony. Radio music, turned up, competed with the piano. Absurdly I thought: What will the neighbors think? Where are my neighbors? And I remembered that I didn’t even know their names. After some time I became aware of my own sobbing, and something else, frail and familiar. I rolled over and put my ear to the door. Under the din I could hear my wife’s voice. “Oh,” she was saying. When had she come in? “Oh, my God,” she cried. “Oh! Oh!”

  Alice’s Brother

  Alice’s brother Dan had been a smoker all his life and had just had a laryngectomy to treat the cancer in his throat. They took out his voice box, but he refused to let them insert an artificial one.

  “You talk to him,” said Cynthia, Dan’s second wife. “He won’t listen to me. He just sits there and stares out the window. I told him he might as well be dead.”

  “Don’t say things like that to him,” said Alice. “But how can I talk to him? He can’t say anything back.” Alice lived in Boston and Cynthia had called from their country house in Vermont, where Dan was recuperating from his operation.

  “It doesn’t matter, he doesn’t have to say anything. You know how he listens to you.” Cynthia always said this in a resentful way, as if adding an unspoken for some reason. “Look, talk to him, will you? I know those boxes sound terrible, like an old World War I radio, but I can’t live with this silence. It’s a creep-house around here.”

  It occurred to Alice that she could live with silence, especially Dan’s silence. What was the problem? They had been close since they were children, Dan two years younger than she. They didn’t have to gab a lot to understand one another.

  “All right, Cynthia, put him on. I don’t know what I’ll say.”

  “Thanks, Alice. Just give him a pitch. Tell him for Christ’s sake everybody’s getting voice boxes these days.”

  Images of her brother with his slim blond good looks tumbled through Alice’s mind while Cynthia went to get him, though in truth he was no longer either slim or blond. Despite his smoking and drinking, Dan had had a wonderful singing voice, a fine Irish tenor; no wonder he didn’t want a tinny voice box. On the other hand, you couldn’t just go through life like a deaf-mute, especially if, like Dan, you always thought of funny things to say. Maybe he could write them out. What was she going to tell him?

  “Alice,” Cynthia said, “here’s Dan. Please put some sense into his
stubborn head.”

  She could hear the phone changing hands, shuffling of feet, the scraping of a chair. “Dan. How are you?” she said, remembering right away that he couldn’t answer. Stupid! “I’m so sorry you’re having trouble. I wish I were there to help you.” There was a sound like a mouse scratching. Was he trying to say something? She had heard that people with voice boxes could still whistle, maybe they could make other sounds as well.

  “Dan, is there anything you’d like me to do? God, I keep forgetting! Look, we can’t do it this way, I just can’t make a speech at you. You’ll do what you want to, anyway, just like you always have. Let’s do this, I have an idea,” she said. “I’ll ask you questions, and you tap once for Yes and twice for No. Is that all right? I’m supposed to talk to you about this voice box.”

  After a brief pause Alice said, “Do you have a pencil or something?”

  Tap. Yes!

  “Oh, Dan, isn’t this a good idea!”

  Tap-tap. No.

  “No?” she cried. “Why not? Oh, that won’t work!” She shook the phone in exasperation. “You don’t want to talk?”

  Tap-tap. No.

  She realized she would have trouble with negative questions, so she asked again. “Do you want to talk?”

  Tap-tap.

  “But Dan,” Alice said, “you can’t do this!” In the mirror by the phone she could see her eyes tearing up. Suddenly it seemed that the most important thing in the world was to somehow communicate with her brother. They had always loved one another, stayed in touch through all kinds of separations. He couldn’t pull away now, just because of a stupid voice box!

  “Dan, is Cynthia there? I don’t want to talk to her or anything, I just want to know if she’s there.”

  Tap-tap. No.

  “Good. Are you sitting down?”

  Tap. Yes.

  “Good. I am, too.” Alice paused, wrapping the telephone cord around her wrist the way the children did. “I want you to tell me everything. I think I know, anyway, but I want to hear it from you. With your own pencil.” She smiled into the mirror; people always said she and Dan had twin smiles. “That’s a joke.” She paused again.

  Tap.

  “That’s better. We can still joke together, can’t we?”

  Tap.

  “Are you in pain? The truth.”

  Tap. Tap-tap.

  “Yes and no? Sometimes?”

  Tap.

  “I don’t think Cynthia helps you enough. She’s never had children, she doesn’t have that motherly instinct. Anyway, she’s a child herself.” Alice frowned at her gray hair in the mirror. “I can see that she’s sexy and all that, but I think you know by now you made a big mistake. Eleanor was so nice, in her quiet sort of way.”

  There was no reply to this, so Alice asked, “Don’t you agree?”

  Tap.

  “Listen, I’ll tell you a joke. An old man dies and goes to heaven and Jesus is at the gate, giving St. Peter a break, I suppose. ‘You look familiar,’ says Jesus, ‘were you a carpenter, by any chance?’ ‘Why, yes I was,’ says the old man. ‘Did you have a beloved son who went away and left you?’ ‘Alas, so I did,’ the old man says. Jesus is getting very excited and says, ‘And tell me, in the end, did that son have holes in his hands and feet?’ ‘Why, yes, he did. This is extraordinary!’ ‘Father!’ cries Jesus, and the old man says, ‘Pinocchio?’ Do you think that’s funny?”

  Tap-tap.

  “Well, I know you like your jokes spicier, but I can’t tell those. It must be a cultural thing, don’t you think? Wherever you go there are all these men telling wonderful jokes and the women just stand around and smile. You’re so lucky. I think it’s because men have been pampered, we’re so busy taking care of you all our lives that we never develop a sense of humor. Do you think that’s right?”

  Tap.

  Alice laughed. “Now I think you’re joking! You never agree to statements like that. But maybe things are changing. The young women today are funnier, they don’t care what they say. Still, Cynthia has no sense of humor at all.”

  Tap.

  “You mean Yes she does, or Yes she has no sense of humor? Wait a minute. Does Cynthia have any sense of humor at all?”

  Tap-tap.

  “You poor baby, that’s what I thought. And you the funniest person in the entire world! Are you in pain now? Right now?”

  Tap. Yes. Tap. Yes.

  “Oh, Dan! Very much pain?”

  Tap.

  “Is it this way most of the time?”

  Tap.

  “Why doesn’t Cynthia do anything about it? There must be pills. No wonder you don’t want a voice box, I don’t blame you! You had such a beautiful voice, what is she thinking of?” Alice heard a chair scraping and asked, “Are you still there?”

  Tap-tap.

  She almost burst out sobbing: he was telling jokes! “Remember, Dan, when you sang at my wedding, it was so lovely everyone cried? I’ll tell you a secret. You were so much handsomer than Charles I almost didn’t go through with it.”

  Tap-tap.

  “Of course you’d say no. I’m the only one who really appreciates you, including yourself. I knew there was a wild streak in you that Eleanor couldn’t stand, but I liked that! I have one myself, though no one would ever know. If people knew what I really thought they’d be shocked to death, even the children. Diana keeps trying to sign me up for a workshop in Love, or Creativity, or Grace, or something wacko like that—she calls it ‘attaining life-style excellence.’ Where do the children learn to talk like that?” Alice stood up and began pacing around the hallway, holding the cord over her shoulder. “Dan, do you think we have souls?”

  Tap-tap.

  “See, I knew it, we agree on everything. No souls, no voice boxes,” she said. “Oh, I’m sorry for saying that! I feel drunk or something. You know what I think? I think everything we don’t do—take a trip to Greece, for example, eat a piece of chocolate cake, have an affair with a Turk—is always just that: something we didn’t do. And then it’s all over. What do you think? I mean, do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Tap.

  “I knew you would. I could never talk to Charles like this. ‘I don’t know, dear,’ he’d always say, ‘that depends.’ And I’d say, ‘Charles, don’t you have a single goddamn opinion of your own? We either have souls or we don’t have souls, one or the other!’ And he’d say, ‘Well, that depends on what you mean by soul . . .’ He could go on forever like that, I would have been glad to shoot him!” Alice sat down again and leaned toward the mirror. “Still, I miss him, anyway. He wasn’t a mean person, and you two got along so well. But then men always do, it must be some sort of trick. You have a drink, light each other’s cigarettes, talk about some illiterate ballplayer, and immediately you’re bosom buddies till the end of time. I don’t think it’s fair, life should be harder than that.”

  Tap.

  “Dan, are you kidding with me? I want you to be serious. You know, I think I married Charles because he had such wonderful teeth, he was so good to kiss before we got married. I hate men with little crooked teeth. I never understood why people like that smile so much! Probably it’s just nervousness. But the third night after we were married we were sitting in bed and I looked over at Charles and there he was flat-flossing his teeth right in front of me! The whole bed was shaking as if he were trying to dislodge boulders. I don’t think I ever recovered from that. You would never have done such a thing, but then everyone in our family has good teeth without even trying. The only time I ever used flat floss—trying to be nice to Charles—I flipped my bridge out and it cost us four hundred dollars. That was that.” Alice clenched her teeth and stretched wide her lips. “Does Cynthia use flat floss?”

  Tap.

  “I thought so. But she is a good-looking girl, there’s no doubt about it. It’s funny, though, I’m not the least bit jealous of her—she’s simply too young. When you married Eleanor I was so jealous! I pretended to like her—I really did
like her, in a way—but mainly I was jealous, isn’t that silly? What did she know about what you liked and what you were like? And she was too shy to find out. If I had married you, you would never have divorced me!” Alice fumbled for her lipstick and began applying it carefully, squinting into the mirror. “Don’t listen to me, I’m just babbling along. It’s because I’m so worried about you.” A random reflection made her lips look bright red, and she leaned back.

  Tap.

  “Dan, I had that dream again, you know the one where I’m in a long corridor and all the doors are exactly the same? But I know which one is mine, and my heart is beating so fast when I reach it I just can’t stand it; and then I reach out and open it and it’s completely empty, terrifyingly empty, and I scream and wake up. Do you ever have dreams like that?”

  Tap-tap.

  “But do you dream at all? Maybe men don’t really dream like women, your psyches aren’t developed enough, you basically stay little boys.”

  Tap.

  “Yes, what? Yes, you stay little boys?”

  Tap-tap.

  “No? You mean, you do have dreams.”

  Tap.

  “Are they good dreams?”

  Tap-tap.

  “Oh, Dan, I’m so sorry. Of course you have dreams, and of course they’re terrible! I wish I could dream them for you, I wouldn’t be afraid, I’m used to them, poor baby. I could dream of falling, down and down, into the darkest pits; I would do that for you. Flames and monsters. Giants. Dan, do you remember that day, God, it must be seven lifetimes ago, when Father came home and caught you smoking his cigars? You stood there, so pale and brave, and Father kept slapping you and slapping you until I jumped on his back and pulled his hair. No one was more surprised than me, except maybe Father! But I wasn’t afraid. Oh, I don’t know what to do. I’d do anything to help you, and here I am in Boston and you up there with Cynthia.”