The Piano on the Porch in the Rain

The week after

I did not tell my father.

I went to the hospital every day after school let out. I teach piano lessons at the house in the afternoons, and I cancelled all of them that week. I sat by his bed and read to him from the Macomb paper and the seed catalog, and I held his left hand while the speech therapist worked with him.

He was trying so hard. He would look at a picture of a cup and his whole face would work at it, and what came out was “cuh.” The therapist said that was good. She said that was very good.

Renee came in the mornings. I came in the afternoons. We passed each other in the hallway once, on Tuesday, by the elevators. She nodded at me, and I nodded at her. Neither of us stopped.

On Wednesday a piano tuner came up from Galesburg to look at it. His name was Ray, and he was not the man Renee had called. He was older, with big hands and a little kit in a leather case.

He took the front panel off and looked at the action with a flashlight for a long time.

“Who told you this wasn’t worth anything?” he said.

“Somebody from your town,” I said.

“Well, he’s right, in dollars,” Ray said. “Nobody’s going to pay you for a 1958 Kimball. They give these away every week. But that’s not the same as worth nothing.” He tapped the soundboard. “No cracks. Hammers are good. Somebody kept this in a warm house and played it every day. You let it sit three weeks and settle, and I’ll come back and tune it. It’ll be fine.”

He charged me one hundred and twenty dollars for the visit and told me to pay him when he came back.

On Thursday morning, the men’s Bible study met at six like always. I was not there, but Jeff was home by then, and he went. He told me afterward that Hal read from Ruth that week, about Naomi and her daughter in law who would not leave her, and nobody argued about it at all. They just drank their coffee and looked at the piano against the east wall.