Will Not Attend: Lively Stories of Detachment and Isolation (18 page)

She didn’t respond. She just gazed down at the street.

Finally, she said, “This was a mistake.”

Lorrie was worried that the lady on eight would see it and her heart would be broken. The piano had meant so much to her. It had survived all those decades in her family before briefly coming into our possession, and we junked it.

I understood what she was saying, but all I could really muster was, “Who cares?”

That touched a nerve for some reason and out it poured. She felt I had imposed my will on her, wore her down to get my way. We should’ve been patient. The piano could’ve been professionally cleaned. We could’ve found it a good home. I asked if she meant a farm where it would have lots of room to run around. Her nostrils flared, and she unloaded all the candy—calling me an asshole, a fucking asshole, a fucking jerk, and a pussy. I had a funny response on the tip of my tongue but withheld it in the interest of not getting clocked.

We went to bed in silence. It had been an intense day and I was exhausted. I fell into a deep sleep, occasionally roused by an “accidental” elbow to my temple. (Strangely, these nighttime fender benders had grown more frequent over the years, despite upgrading to a king-size mattress.) I thought about the lady on eight. I had simply been minding my own business when she inserted herself into my life. It was nothing new. The more I try to hide, the more they find me.

The sound of the Kid playing the piano was one of the
most enchanting things I’d ever heard. Lorrie and I stood behind her, arms around each other, watching those little fingers whirl across the keyboard. Through uncontrollable sobs my wife thanked me for having the wisdom and patience to let the Kid revisit her dream when she was ready. She asked me if I could find it within my heart to forgive her. Then she put her hand down my pants.

I stirred awake, but the sound of the piano was still in my head, accompanied by rowdy laughter and shrill voices. It was two a.m. I rose and looked out the window. A band of shit-faced college kids, home for winter break, was gathered around the piano, taking turns at the keyboard. A few of the girls managed to turn out something like a melody, while the guys just banged on the keys like assholes, laughing, as guys often do, at things that aren’t funny. I tried to go back to sleep, but for hours it seemed like every student from Oberlin, Wesleyan, and Tufts took their turn at the piano while loudly exchanging such collegiate wordplay as. “Wooo!” or “My turn!” or “Dude, you suck!”

Sometime around four a.m.
,
the street finally fell quiet. But I lay awake, eyes wide open, anticipating the approaching rumble of the garbage truck. I became aware of the sound of my own breathing when I noticed a hint of light outlining the window shade. Had I nodded off and slept through it? Again, I left the bed and peered outside. It was a steady snow. A cab
was slowly edging down the street, fishtailing to a stop at the traffic light. The piano stood there undisturbed, white and sparkling under the streetlamp.

The blizzard continued into the next day. Alternate-side parking and garbage collection had been suspended. There would be no bulk pickup. Enrobed in a thick blanket of snow, the piano had taken on the appearance of a lavish cake or a piece of sculpture. People took pictures with their cell phones.

We were low on GoLean Crunch and completely out of milk. I was hungry and climbing the walls—but I couldn’t go out, fearing a chance encounter with the lady on eight. Lorrie, also gripped by cabin fever, had curled herself up in a small uncomfortable chair usually favored by the dog. She smiled at me psychotically as she gnawed on a stale Teddy Graham. “Aren’t you starving?” I asked, hoping it would compel her to go out and bring back provisions. “No,” she replied, in a tranquil voice. “I’ve got everything I need for the rest of my life.” She put another bear in her mouth and swallowed it whole. Lorrie knew I was afraid of what was out there, and she was enjoying it. But I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction. “Well,
I’m
going out to get some food,” I said, grabbing my coat and stomping toward the door. “Some
real
food.” Then I stopped. Trying to be the bigger man, I
gave her another chance: “You sure you don’t want to come along, hon? It’s pretty out.”

“Use your brain.”

She was clearly in a mood.

I stood in the elevator, tense and unable to breathe until the indicator safely passed the eighth floor.
This was no way to live,
I thought. The doorman and the porters were in the middle of a hushed conversation as I stepped into the lobby. They immediately clammed up.

“Looks like we got us a little snow out there, gentlemen,” I said in my best jovial, full-of-shit voice. Gabriel, the doorman, normally deliriously chatty on the topic of weather, just cocked his head toward the big glass doors and muttered flatly, “As you see.” The porters turned away, trying not to make eye contact. I caught a glimpse of the security monitor that sat on the front desk. A grainy black-and-white image of the snow-covered piano flickered in the upper right quadrant. It was striking and perfectly framed, as if Orson Welles had composed it for a dream sequence. Gabriel noticed me staring at it.

“Is pretty, right?” he said.

I pretended I didn’t hear him.

“Yeah, a lot of people say they would’ve taken it. Miss Orbach—4A—she told me she would’ve taken it.”

“Well, I don’t know Miss Orbach,” I grunted.

“She said maybe you should’ve put up a flyer by the mailboxes.”

“Tell her she’s welcome to towel it off.”

My instincts had been correct: by now, everyone on the West Side knew I was the monster who threw out the piano. The mob was already lighting their torches. By nightfall I’d be chased through the Ramble in Central Park before they’d have me trapped in Belvedere Castle. The last thing I’d see from the blazing tower would be Lorrie, cheering along with the crowd, as she shared a Teddy Graham with the lady on eight. I returned to the elevator. Venturing outside at this time seemed ill-advised.

It was another day and a half before the streets were cleared and sanitation services resumed. By then, the piano was waterlogged and noticeably sagging. No one tried to play it anymore. No one took pictures.

In the predawn twilight of a cool January morning, I awoke to a tremendous noise rising up from Eighty-first Street. It sounded like a tigress taking down an impala—a convulsive din of crunching and groaning, splintering wood, and the startled yip of snapping wires. Lorrie’s head rose briefly. She glared at me and then rolled to her other side.

The Kid returned the next day and I was truthful; I told her everything. Her face slowly contorted, and then the levee
blew. I held her tight and apologized over and over, I told her how much I loved her, I offered to buy her another turtle and tossed in a water frog. She took the deal, but deep down, I knew we weren’t square. It was a betrayal. A scar. It was the my-father-got-rid-of-my-piano story; something she’d share one day with her college roommates, her husband, her children, and her psychiatrist. It would earn a few crucial frames in her final reel of memories and travel with her into the next life. When it comes to the bad stuff, there’s nothing too small that’s not worth dwelling on forever. I say, anyway.

•   •   •

I was making my way down the narrow staircase at Fairway Market, holding a box of herbal tea that’s supposed to make you smart. She was on her way up. I didn’t recognize her. Her hair was done—blown straight or something—and she wore a belted, blue-purplish coat that you could almost call stylish. She looked younger. I managed a clumsy smile as I tried to squeeze by. She took hold of my arm, and that’s when I actually saw her.

“I’m so sorry the piano didn’t work out,” the lady on eight said. “I’m just happy your daughter got to enjoy it for a while.”

I started to lose my balance and almost fell down the stairs, but she had a firm hold on my wrist.

“Well, you know kids,” I replied, as if reciting a line in a
play, “they want one thing one minute and something else the next.”

“Oh, I understand,” she said with a laugh. “It’s not your fault.”

“We really tried to find it a home,” I went on, “but it just took up so much room and my mother’s coming for a visit and she’s not feeling well, so . . .”

She smiled and nodded and seemed to be counting the number of times my eyes blinked. Then she wished my mother well and said she had to run; she was picking up a few things before catching a flight out west to shoot a Lanacane commercial. “That was a lucky one,” she said. “It just fell out of the air.” Then she floated away.

Adam Resnick is an Emmy Award–winning writer who began his career at
Late Night
with David Letterman
. He went on to cocreate the Fox sitcom,
Get a Life
, and has written several screenplays, including cult favorites
Cabin Boy
and
Death to Smoochy
. Resnick has written for
Saturday Night Live
, was a co-executive producer and writer for HBO’s
The Larry Sanders Show
, and created the HBO series
The High Life
, which was produced by David Letterman’s company, Worldwide Pants. He lives in New York
City.

*
Chunky Chips Ahoy! (Chip
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—plural.)