I've decided to write a bit. I'm not sure if it will come out a short story, fragmented prose, poetry prose, or what, but I am feeling like I need to write something so here goes! Please leave me feedback!
Love and prayers,
Lauren :)
The bright blue sky surrounded Bryan's home like he was a gold fish and the sky was the inside of his fishbowl... minus the algae. He sat alone in his backyard, on his hard, plastic chair with its floppy, tore up arm and looked up at the sky.
It's too pretty looking, he thought. Gotta be something sinister at work.
And that was Bryan.
Bryan's wife, Naomi had left almost three weeks ago after he accidentally threw an olive oil bottle at her. Well, Bryan told himself it was an accident, but really, how could it have been anywhere near involuntary? Naomi was cooking her weekly spaghetti when she, as usual, asked him to go to the soup kitchen to volunteer with her as she had every Wednesday night for the past fifteen years. Bryan lost his temper and told her no for the "billionth time" and the usual argument ensued, with divergences in subject, frivolity, regrets, and emotional entanglements; before he could fully realize that reality and what was playing out in his mind had fully synched, the bottle was in his hand, he had thrown it in attempt to simply sail it past her, and his shaking, emotional hands had thrown a curveball at her shoulder instead of a fastball at the sturdy wall, turned backstop.
Bryan was bitter, but nostalgic and thoughtful. He looked up at the sky thinking that if he smoked, this would be the perfect opportunity. He puckered up, blew up his clean air at the beautiful sky slowly, relaxing on his fake buzz, and closed his eyes.
Acting like I'm smoking-- shameful. I've never wanted to smoke in my life. He wrinkled his eyebrows. She turned me crazy!
And Bryan had known all along that Naomi was crazy. For instance, when she was picking up the pieces of the bottle, he overheard her muttering about how it was a sign from God that it had been their first wedding gift that he had broken.
That was fifteen years ago, how could I have remembered that? he had thought.
Well, it made Naomi feel like she was looking at some concrete evidence of what was going on in her heart, and she split. She kissed him goodbye with a sad, knowing look in her eye. She didn't even look him in the eye with those distant eyes or say goodbye. And he never knew where she went. He never went to find her. He never stopped grinding his teeth along that back filling he had gotten right before the incident happened.
You couldn't even tell there was a filling back there, he had though, and, Technology covers up all kinds of mishaps nowadays.
When Bryan was satisfied with his fresh air inhalation and was ready to go back into the dusty old house, he shook off his hat (that was already perfectly clean), and, alone, crossed the threshold. It was about five pm he decided, and he was going to heat up a Hungry Man, appropriately titled, as he usually noted. As the microwave hummed, Bryan meandered past the kitchen chairs and into the living room, plotting out his next move. Actually, he was just going through the motions of looking like he was plotting his next move, because all he truly was doing was looking for the remote control and looking around the room that hadn't changed in fifteen years.
Stale.
When Bryan found the remote, set it strategically on his Lazyboy, and continued to just peer around his habitat, his eyes landed on the piano in the corner, startled by it as he had been many times lately. It was old, with its pealing, light tan coating, smelled like an old church, and put a bad taste in his mouth. It had been Naomi's, of course, and he resented that she had left it with him instead of taking it with her. She'd taken the dog even, and had a trailer available, so why didn't she take her own piano? He knew she had left it there just to torment him. She had to have known that he had fallen in love with her for the first time when he had heard her playing at that club twenty years ago... and that seeing it after she left only reminded him that he had lost her.
No bother, he thought. Plenty of fish in the sea.
But the truth was, Bryan was 40 years old, without a wife, without children, without his dog, without even the closure of divorce papers. And there was that "damned piano."
Bryan cleared his throat and looked up when the microwave alerted him, and drew in the smell of chewy Salisbury steak and greasy gravy. It wasn't like her cooking.
Instead of going to the kitchen right away, however, Bryan started to grow angry. He became hot just like the plastic-like food he had prepared himself, and instead of allowing himself to cool, like he often did with his now-daily TV dinners, he sank into his heated self right away.
Why would she leave me after one little mishap? he boiled. I explained exactly what happened and, as usual, she refused to listen to me. She thinks she knows my every thought. Thinks she has me all figured out. Well, she doesn't. Not even after fifteen years. And after all I have done for that woman, now she just wants to go off in her self pity, armed with her spoon-fed ideas of women's rights and what she deserves! Maybe Dr. Phil will do a special on her this week and she can go to the actual show instead of telling me about it each day. He can smile his not-an-actual-doctor smile and pat her on the back, yelling at her to fight for what she supposedly deserves. I will show her what she deserves! She deserves a beat up piano sent to her in fragments! Maybe that can be one of her "symbols" or "metaphors!"
With that, Bryan kicked the piano, growled, and pushed it with only shaky, passionate anger, and not strategic, thought-out strength, causing himself to fall in a counterclockwise spiral, hitting the top of his head first on the wooden piano bench and allowing himself to crumble into a fetal position on the smelly, old carpeted ground.
"Hmmm," he moaned in a tone of equal parts confusion, anger, attitude, and poorly disguised shame. Bits and shavings of the ancient piano's coating fell in a dust around him.
He laid on his side for a while there, not really thinking of anything. In fact, his mind seemed to clear a bit for the first time in years, but it wasn't because he was neglecting to sink into his bitter thoughts, it was because he refused to think of the shame, hurt, and, perhaps, enlightenment he faced. After two more minutes of nothingness, he cracked his neck both ways, slowly rose to a seated position, and brushed off the debris spit out by his ivory adorned enemy.
Bryan turned to his last resort. Like he had as a child when he knew he could do nothing else, he spit on the piano with a mean, mean look on his face. The meanest he could muster. However, his face relaxed into a stupor as he watched the spit drip down the piano book, sinking into the keys where her fingers had once laid.
That's what I am, Bryan thought. An angry child.
When he fully realized that he had just spit on a piano, he went into the kitchen, grabbed a used rag out of the stack of dirty dishes, and wiped the piano clean. He cleaned the spit spot and then just kept spreading the dish soap suds all over the old piano and even the book of songs that she usually played at weddings. With the suds, he made designs, and then looked at the dust that blackened the yellow washcloth. Something did not look right to him about what the coating and the dish soap did when they met, and he figured he was probably, as usual, doing something wrong. He sighed and slapped the washcloth on top of the piano. He smiled in spite of himself, with no emotion in his gray eyes, with no happiness, just straight acknowledgment of his own pathetic, character-like self.
He sank into the cushioned bench rug. It was like a really old couch that you just can't throw away even though it is broken and has holes and stains, because it gets to be more and more of a comfort as it ages. He opened the song book and looked at the songs. Many of them were classical, traditional, or just old, cheesy songs. He chuckled that "I Put a Spell on You" had been included in her collection, because the couple that had lived on their street for approximately three months had insisted that it was the perfect song for their wedding. Smiling was strange to him, but he slowly grew to like it. He realized that he was not smiling from one of his own jokes at the expense of someone else's feelings, or the idiocy or strangeness he often deemed the neighbors possessed, or even from the gas the dog used to pass as Naomi would hold him. He was laughing from something purely, positively comical: his wife singing a song about forcing someone to love you even when they're "fooling around" on you... at a wedding.
And then he realized something further, even that was making fun of someone. Bryan scanned through his mind, searching for anything he had laughed at recently that was not at the expense of someone else. He could not think of one incident. He thought of when he laughed at the high voice of the man that sat in front of them at church every Sunday; he thought of when he laughed at when the lady at the city talent show sang a really bad note; he thought of when he laughed when the "no good, deserving" bank teller got punched in a robbery just because the teller had given Bryan a hard time when they were trying to close and he got to the bank late. He thought of when he laughed at the guy across the street because he had let the grass get too high just because his loud mouth wife had finally made her last two-timing exit.
Bryan looked out the window to his left. The grass needed cut.
The microwave beeped, reminding Bryan that it was ready for him, and he went into the kitchen to eat. He chomped down on the food and wished for Naomi's food. He looked at the table and wished for Naomi's cleaning. He scraped his plastic fork against the plastic TV dinner tray, wishing he would man up and figure out that dish washer.
Suddenly, the doorbell rang. Bryan was startled, and thought, of course, at first, about Naomi. His heart felt a shock of excitement, but then forced himself to dull down; he did not want to be too let down if it wasn't her. He rose to his feet, ran his fingers through his thick, conditioned hair, and went to the door.
When he opened the door, he encountered a large, bald man with a cigarette in his mouth. Bryan blinked and opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came.
"Hey, man. Here for ya piano?" the man's voice was like two large pieces of charcoal scraping against one another.
Two other men in white suits reading "Joe's Moving Co." and equally rough exteriors came up to the porch while grumbling to each other about the Yankees and the Cubs. Bryan nodded at the first man, and ushered them in.
As the large men filled the small living room with their mood altering presence, Bryan cleared his throat, "So, uh, did a woman call you and set this up?"
The first man, who was older than the other two (still arguing about baseball), didn't even look at Bryan, pulling out his Marlboro with one hand and setting his other hand on the soapy piano; "I doh' know, buddy. I just read the schedule and go where it says, ya know?" He laughed a gruff voice. "I guess I can check the papers and see who made the request. You want me to do that, brother?"
Bryan nodded and looked down, actually sad that he was parting with the piano. Upset that he had jumped to the conclusion that Naomi had left the piano on purpose.
Silly. No, stupid.
"Okay, you got it, man. The customer's the customer... or whatever," one of the younger men said, probably the Yankees fan.
As the young man went out to the trailer, its truck still running, the older man took the piano book and washcloth off of the piano, handing them to Bryan.
"I don't think your ex-wife wants these as a package deal or nothin'" the man smiled at Bryan trying to make light of the situation with humor, but warmth and understanding, too.
"I thought you said you didn't know if--"
The older man interrupted, "I don't know, but that face o' yours makes me strongly suspect."
Yankee came in with a paper, reading in a voice too low for his age, "Is it Naomi Bryant?"
Bryan tensed at the sound of his wife's maiden name, and the sound of something so close to his own name, "Yeah, you guys can take it. That's alright. That's hers."
"Alright then, bud," the leader said, getting to work quickly. Bryan trudged back the kitchen and the three men had the piano out before Bryan could finish his HungryMan.
When the piano was completely out of Bryan's view, the older man ran back into the house, and gave Bryan something to sign, a receipt, and a survey he could mail back and get a discount for; "But it's all paid for by yer ex wife so don't worry 'bout that," he explained.
Bryan nodded and paused, "Can you tell me where she is? Where did the request come from? Let me see the paper please."
The man thought a while, replying, "Well we usually don't have situations like this where the person doesn't know about the other person's whereabouts and I'd say that it'd probly be best if I didn't mess with that or anything, ya know, man?"
"Yeah, I get it," Bryan said with another sigh. He gave the man the signed paperwork and watched him retrace his steps right out the front door, making sure the other boys secured the trailer well, and hopping in the driver's seat to take off towards the east.
Bryan looked over in the corner as he heard the loud truck's distinctive noise disappear into the noise of other traffic. The piano was gone, and in its place was dust, a few sheets of wrinkled, old music, a long lost dog toy, and some coins.
Well, the grass needs cut, Bryan thought. He pushed aside his thoughts and went out the back door. He put on his hat, took off his second layer of shirt, waved at the neighbors, and went to work.
But in Bryan's mind, what pushed him through the hot and sticky evening was a woman's voice singing of love and spells amidst ever changing piano music, a symbol of what once was. And of what could now be again.
