Elliot noticed the Fig Lady next door peeking through her curtains whenever he came home through the front door. Two or three times, she came out to the front porch to say hello, and one day offered him a fresh fig off her tree. “You have to pick them when they ripen before the squirrels get them.” She was quite old and spoke with a heavy accent in broken English despite the fact that she’d apparently lived in the house on Garfield Street in the heart of the nation’s capital for several decades. Elliot was able to glean that she had come to America as a young woman, married her husband, and seldom saw her grown children and grandchildren who were scattered across the Land of the Free.
Over the course of several of these impromptu conversations before and after Elliot’s trip to the country to meet Erica, he had pieced together a few strands of the rather complicated knot of relationships that tied (Erica, Maggie, and the basement contents) together. (This leading to Erica’s history. Walker, Amika, and Taurus are still out of Elliot’s picture. Jill’s family will have to be presented from another POV; perhaps during Elliot’s trip south.)
What the neighbors might say
The Fig Lady had told Maggie that the piano had belonged to a previous family who moved away ages ago. The husband died around 1960 and the wife remarried and moved away after a year or so leaving the teen-aged daughter in the home. An uncle came to live there and look after the girl. He seemed a little odd, and revealed his strong German accent when he spoke. But the girl seemed very happy, friendly, and well-adjusted. Erica – a lovely girl. While she was studying at the university, the uncle (who was very rich, it was said) moved into a big house overlooking the Rock Creek Park in nearby Kalorama neighborhood, and Erica found a roommate – Maggie. They made a great pair, and were a pleasure as neighbors. No wild parties or seedy visitors. Very prim and proper, just the way the neighborhood liked it. She was suspicious and disapproving of Benny when he began to frequent the house. But once he and Maggie were properly married, it was all put right.
The FigLady had both witnessed and shared the gossip around the neighborhood about the big blowup that had happened between Benny and Maggie so many years ago. One day, movers came and moved a piano out of the house. Then a little later in the afternoon, they heard a terrible racket. A woman was screaming, as if being attacked. But it was Maggie shrieking after her husband who was stalking down toward Connecticut Avenue. For some reason, he had given away or sold the piano, and she was throwing him out of the house. The gossip around the neighborhood was that he might have had a gambling or drug problem. The feeling was that he was a bit odd, keeping to himself for the most part, but not a raging drunk or troublemaker.
There was a piano at the house on Garfield Street.
At one time, quite a while ago, apparently. Elliot had picked up bits and pieces of the piano story from the fig lady next door, on the drive to Erica’s, and at Friday night’s dinner. But he hadn’t heard Benny’s version of the story until … (back in DC).
(If I do this well it will be like a ping-pong match between Benny and Maggie, the reader sympathizing with each sequentially. … re writPianoHome: )
Every new bit of information, every twist put the story in a different light. At first it seemed like Benny was a complete clod to have done such a horrible thing. How does one actually go about losing a piano? It’s not a small thing like a set of keys or even a wallet. But on further examination it seemed that Benny had only the best and loving intentions toward his efforts with the piano. He was trying to tune the instrument and surprise her when she came home that evening. But to do so he had to take apart much more than he had the wherewithal to put back together again. So he faced a dilemma. (re 3 paths before him with the piano mechanism spread out on the dining room floor before him.)
He couldn’t possibly know that his decision that night decades ago would set the stage and blaze a trail far into the future of their relationship. He’d had 3 choices before him, and none were ideal. So he picked the one that he thought at the time made the most sense. Had he known then what he came to know later he most certainly would have picked a different path to travel in his marriage with Maggie, this woman who …
Was she even the same person he’d fallen so far head over heels over? How could she be the same person? It was common knowledge that our bodies and brains reconstitute themselves in a matter of … what? Days, weeks? Something extraordinary.
thermodynamics of ideas 