Ixchel's Keys

I found it in the baby grand piano my grandmother’s ghost plays in my ex-stepfather’s mansion. A composition book. I’ve plucked it delicately from the strings and hammers beneath the lid - which I have never opened until now - and cradle its binding between my slender fingers. Flicking through each leaf of paper, I see row after row of five-lined staff. Crawling across it are hundreds of scribbled music notes. Spider-like in style, twining stems and irregular dots scratched from top down as a lightning bolt is to sea…There are ninety-six pages of this, I notice, peering at the little numbers dotting each bottom corner. And on the last page, the ninety-seventh, there’s a final line of staff, only two notes inked across it. An unfinished measure. A final bar of mystery.

“Whatcha got there?”

I jump, dug out of my reverie by his kind, gravelly voice. Mr. Carson, piano tuner, next door neighbor, and domestic fish aficionado.

“Just a bit of schoolwork,” I fib, tightening my grip imperceptibly. Mr. Carson straightens up with a slight grunt, placing the tuning lever on a side table.

“Still can’t believe that crazy school you’re going to. Your folks said it’s only prodigies that get in there.” He wipes his forehead with a spare dust cloth I once used on my violin. I haven’t played it in months though, favoring this particular piano. My fingers just...fit better against keys than strings. They feel more at home. Reaching a hand towards me with curiosity, he asks, “May I take a look?”

Without knowing quite what I’ve just discovered, it’s difficult to say no. “S-sure,” I mumble, handing over the shiny, leather-bound notebook.

I focus on my hands as he flips through the pages. My left fiddles with the swirling end of my braid while my right seems to be subconsciously playing a rendition of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. I breathe once, twice.

“You wrote all this?”

I look back up to find his snow-blue eyes rounded and on my face. “Well, no, not...not exactly.” His caterpillar eyebrows creep upwards, prompting. “I found it. I’ve just started adding to it.” I don’t know what compels the lie from my lips, but it materializes into the air easily, as if I’d had ages to prepare for this moment. Mr. Carson tinkers with the piano a final few minutes before standing back in satisfaction. He sighs, wishes me well at my ‘fancy music school,’ and shuffles out the door.

I always liked that man.

It’s grandma, swaying a few inches above the floor in typical ghost fashion, dark hair swept up beneath a red hat and the ever-present crucifix hanging round her throat. All the colors of her ensemble are muted, including her once-caramel skin and swimming chocolate eyes.

“He’s just Mr. Carson, grandma.” I approach the piano, a tingle starting in the hollow of my chest. Who hides something in a piano? In my piano? The one I’ve been playing since I was eleven, fingers treading over the black and white keys for almost six years! How is it that I’ve never lifted the lid? I hesitate and think better of sitting down, turning to explore this curiosity in the safety of my room.

Wandering the halls of my ex-stepfather’s house is ever an eerie experience, but the feeling of unease was more subtle during the sixteen years I spent ignorant to the fact it really was his DNA flooding my veins and not my dad’s. Since then, these halls carry the weight of war-time memories. My stepfather, the liar. My stepfather, the cheat. My stepfather...the man who dedicated his life to raising me with all the privileges I could imagine.

I swish lightly through the doorway and settle myself among the peaceful blue hues of my bedroom, cocooned in self-made calm. Opening the curious composition book, I run my fingers over the rough, ink-smudged pages, allowing them to tap out the rhythms.

Go on, my little duck, play it. You wouldn’t keep an old woman waiting, would you?

Grandma’s back, and sitting comfortably upon the stool nudged up against my keyboard. My lips tug into a smile.

Sitting down, the world dissolves into shades of blue, misting out my peripheral vision as scrawled music notes take over. Line after line, harmony climbing then tumbling to a strong melody in the bass clef, page upon page winking from right to left to...gone. I’ve run out of music. I’m staring at the second measure on the ninety-seventh page and I keep playing. Grandma has disappeared and the music is in me, pouring forth across the keyboard.

At last, I stop. I realize I’ve played a hundred different endings to this final page, each a preconceived finale I didn’t have to create I simply played.

I stand with uncertainty. It has grown dark, my room dimming to match my hazy thoughts. Pure exhaustion fuels my stumble to the bed. The ninety-seventh page plays on repeat in my ears.

Waking up has never felt so foreign. Lifting my arms feels like pulling them from sticky jelly, and my eyes drag around the room listlessly. There’s the keyboard, my music books, a bit of homework for my advanced composing class…

No notebook.

There’s no little black notebook, my treasure once hidden inside the baby grand.

I leap to the keyboard, panicking. In place of the leather book is a single, manila envelope. I tear it open, slicing a finger on the fine edge and grimacing. Bills. Hundred dollar bills. Dozens of them!

I tear my sheet music from the keyboard, tossing it to the floor - I need a clue! And there’s nothing, frustratingly nothing, until finally I turn over the mangled envelope and make out a few words inscribed lightly in pencil:

I hope this is enough. Don’t try to find the book.

- Mr. Carson