Porn and the Piano

When Monday arrived, I had successfully avoided seven phone calls from my mother the previous day, leading to seven never-ending messages. The final one saying I “better be dead in my apartment” or I will be when she gets a hold of me for not returning her calls. And I decided I must be dead, and I have entered the gates of hell.

Secretly hoping to startle my sleeping mother, I called her back on my six thirty drive to work. I should have known she was already on her second power-walking mile.

“Finally,” she huffed, answering the phone.

“Good morning to you, Mother.”

“Where have you been?”

“Busy. I do have a life.” Which if you count The Hills marathon on MTV as a life, I was telling the truth.

“Oh please, Mark told me you don’t have a boyfriend.” I could actually hear her arms pumping violently by her side as she walked.

“Mark? How would Mark know if I had a boyfriend?” And why the hell was she talking to Mark about my boyfriend…or lack of boyfriend?

“I don’t know. Do you think maybe he still cares for you?” Her act of naiveté was nauseating at this hour.

“No, Mother. He does not. I have to go. I’m pulling into work.”

“Dinner tonight. Seven o’clock.”

“Okay,” I sighed, defeated too much, too early in the day.

“Excellent. Enjoy your day.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I grumbled, hanging up the phone.

I teach high school English at a public school five minutes away from the private school I attended. I am not the young, white woman who walked into the low-income, gang-infested, high minority populated inner-city school. Which do make for great Lifetime movies, don’t get me wrong. But if you are imagining Freedom Writers, remove Hilary Swank’s pearls, multiply her one racially diverse class by five, add a district and state curriculum, subtract McDreamy (who I always find more McWhiny), and you have a truer idea of what my job entails. I do want to make a difference; I don’t think you could be a teacher without wanting to help others. And I have written my share of letter s to judges and probation officers as well as watch female students’ stomachs grow for nine months. And I teach freshmen. But I think this is what all teachers experience, even those teaching in a suburb of Houston like myself.

I walked through the main entrance and was immediately hit by the smell of high school. I have been to many high schools, and they all smell the same. The deodorantless. The cafeteria food. The antiqued textbooks. The decades worth of gum under desks. The chalk and the markers. The fresh paint covering whatever teenagers thought wall or stall worthy. The gym clothes and sack lunches left in lockers. The symphony of smells creating the breath of high school.

Dragging a bag full of essays I never got around to grading, I made my way to my classroom. I had just thrown the pile onto my desk when Kim, the ex-lawyer, tell it how it is, don’t mess with me, burst through my open door.

“Check your email,” she declared, walking across the room and turning my computer on for me.

“What? What now?” I asked, dreading another email from administration.

“No, nothing bad. More funny. For us, anyways,” she smiled.

We both sat in silence as I opened my email.

“What’s going on?” a voice came from the doorway.

“Jenny, you have to see this,” Kim answered. Jenny, mother of three, my second (more motherly) mother, walked over, now looking over my shoulder, and we peered into the monitor with jaws dropped.

“Oh. My. God,” I laughed in disbelief. In front of our eyes was footage of our head football coach in what looked like the first moments of a low-budget pornographic film.

“I could show you some moves off the field,” he whispered to his co-star, moving closer and tossing his clipboard to the side as the unoriginal strip tease music began. “And I won’t be fumbling in balls.”

“Ohhh,” we all yelled, minimizing the screen before giving Coach a chance to further explain his game plan.

“Where did you get this?” Jenny asked, gaping at the now pornless screen.

“It was sent to all faculty and staff late last night. I just came from the front office, hoping to hear who exactly knew about this, when Dr. August rushed into his office and slammed the door,” Kim shared.

“So, I guess he knows,” I laughed. Dr. August is our rumored bipolar, dictionary walking, Michael Scottish principal.

“I wonder if it is on the news yet.” Jenny opened the News 2 Houston website, scanning for the story.

“If it isn’t there yet, it will be by lunch,” Kim offered.

And she was right. In between classes all day, fellow teachers pretended to monitor students while in reality they gossiped in the hallway. My pile of essays to grade did not even lessen by one, for my conference period was spent watching and re-watching the one and a half minute porno clip or the breaking news story on all of Houston’s local networks with the crowd gathered in the English office.

The football coach was given paid leave, until an investigation was completed, and by a show of hands, an overwhelming majority of English teachers decided they, too, would have volunteered to participate in porn if they’d known paid leave was in their future.

The day skipped quickly along as they always do when you are dreading the night. And a wedding planning dinner with my mother was definitely something to dread.

A slate stone path weaves through my parents’ perfectly landscaped front yard. I always feel so small jumping from one stone to the next, because I can never bring myself to allow my short legs their comfortable gait and step on the grass between stones.

The front door was unlocked, and I wasn’t surprised to find the house empty; my mother adores showing off her jungle of a backyard. I followed the grand crescendo of voices out the back door and was greeted with an overzealous soprano.

“Becca!” my mother sang over the small crowd. “Finally the maid of honor has arrived!” Maybe it is me, but I swear my mother emphasized “maid.”

“Hi. Hello. Hi,” I greeted the many faces now welcoming me.

My mother glided over, kissing my cheek, and whispering, “Would it kill you to wear something cheerful?”

“It’s a dress.” I looked down, frantically trying to smooth the wrinkles out of the silk dress.

“It’s navy,” she whined.

“Mother, stop!” I urged between closed teeth as she, too, began pulling at my dress.

“Becca, I don’t think you’ve met everyone,” Emily called, waving us over to the party and probably hoping we would leave the insanity behind. No such luck. “This is Jacob’s brother Ian.”

Standing before me was the same crumpled hair guy to whom I had confessed an odor of shit at the brunch on Saturday.

“Oh, we’ve met.” I didn’t know until this moment that every ounce of blood in your body could rush to your head, and not only will you live, you won’t even pass out.

“Not formally. It’s nice to meet you, Becca,” he smiled. And as he leaned in to shake my hand, he whispered so that only I could hear, “You smell nice tonight.”

“Right,” was all that came out, and I looked down, avoiding his blue eyes. He wore brown leather flip-flops, and his toes sprouted scarce fields of brown hairs.

I needed a drink, so I excused myself and made my way to the bar back inside the house.

“Pour me one, too,” Meredith demanded as she threw down her purse on the kitchen counter. “How long have you been here?”

“A couple minutes. Long enough.” I poured Meredith’s scotch and handed it to her.

We stood in silence, taking large gulps of alcohol.

“Let’s just go and get it over with,” I offered. But before walking back to the party, we refilled our glasses.

“At least your funeral ensemble is fitting this time,” Meredith giggled, laughing at her own joke. “Except I’m not completely sure whose funeral it is yet.”

The dinner wasn’t as torturous as I feared. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was awful, but there were some positives. I didn’t have to sit by Meredith all evening; crumpled hair, blue eyed Ian took care of that for me. I was also far enough away from my mother that I could only hear every other word she said. But yes, the wedding talk was endless. So after dessert and the last of many drinks, I quietly vanished from the roar of color schemes and photographers and possible rehearsal locations to the only peace found in my parents’ house: the piano.

I pulled the bench from underneath the piano’s belly, and it growled against the oak floors below as if reprimanding my long absence. I sat gently, sliding a little as my silk dress made contact with the polished wood. Slipping the cover off to reveal the black and white keys, I automatically corrected my slouching posture and stared at the silver framed photographs that decorate the instrument. In every picture, Emily, Meredith, or I are posing in front of various pianos and holding trophies or medals and wearing pink dresses trimmed in lace. Always pink.

Before deciding what to play, my fingers took control, and they quickly danced across the surface of the black and white alley, flirting with each key momentarily before meeting the next, toying with each individual sound. I then started to intensify the sound by violently striking the notes. The more profound the chord, the more I disappeared into the music. My heart conformed to the new beat. My blood flowed within the new rhythm. My thoughts slid through my fingertips and exploded into fireworks of echoes overhead.

“How long have you played?”

The voice immediately and painfully shocked my core, causing the levity of my spirit to sink. My fingers froze, losing all musicality, and the last sound reverberating through the vaulted ceilings mirrored the first chords a two year old creates with delight.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Ian offered.

“Oh, that’s okay. I just…I just didn’t hear anyone come in,” I smiled weakly and started to grab the cover to contain the keys and my awkwardness.

“Don’t stop,” Ian insisted and sat down on the edge of the piano bench. I started to slide over, but he stopped me before I could. “I’m good,” he assured.

“Are you sure?”

“”Yeah, yeah,” he waved away my question. “Play something.”

“Uh…I don’t know…like what?” I hate that good looking men scare the crap out of me.

“Whatever you were playing before,” Ian offered.

“What was I playing?” I honestly didn’t know.

Ian laughed—with me or at me, I wasn’t quite sure.

I started to play a Chopin concerto, knowing it was not, however, what I had been playing before.

“How long have you been playing?” he asked over the soft chords and intricate but delicate melody.

“Forever.”

We sat silently until the final notes faded, allowing the music to have the sole voice.

However, I quickly shoved the silence away, “Did I miss anything outside?”

“No, just more wedding talk,” he over annunciated his words, clearly sharing my frustration. “Oh, except your sister Meredith has all but said she is willing to have sex with me tonight,” he smiled.

“Oh, well…God.” I couldn’t take the insanity anymore. I dropped my elbows onto the piano keys, creating a sound of thunder, and held my head, burying my face. “Why can’t we be normal?” I groaned.

Ian laughed again as I continued, now looking into his blue sea of eyes. “No, seriously. Who does that? Who offers sex to their sisters’ fiancé’s brother when they’ve just met? Who offers sex to anyone when their entire family is in earshot? Who? We’re all insane.” If he hadn’t been laughing, I would have been completely sure that he thought I was a lunatic, but now I was only sure he thought I was a complete lunatic but one with a sense of humor.

“There’s no such thing as normal, let alone a normal family,” Ian offered with a smile. God, he is cute.

“That’s not true. Look at your family. Your mom isn’t practically ripping your clothes off in efforts of de-wrinkling you, as if that is your biggest problem. Your sibling isn’t basically selling a ‘buy one hour of hot sex and get the second one free’ to any of the other guests at the party. And you…you aren’t ranting to a perfect stranger,” I finally stopped to breathe.

“You’re right, but not all of our family is here tonight,” he started. “We have a sister. And if I’m the black sheep in the family that would make her a neon flashing light.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you ask my parents, they will have a well rehearsed story, but the truth is, my younger sister dropped out of college and is now working at an organic farm in California with her girlfriend.”

“Oh,” I was pleasantly surprised. And we both started laughing at my obvious relief that other families had problems.

“My mother would die.”

“See?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

And then, we fell silent. I could hear the voices from outside; my mother’s the loudest. But I pushed it all aside and thought, kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me. My pathetic, lonely mantra.

“Becca! Are you in hear?” I heard my mother call from the backyard.

“Yeah. Coming,” I called back and stood to leave. But as I started to walk away, I turned back and said, “Don’t have sex with my sister.”

“Okay,” he smiled.