A red tainted Silence by Carolyn Gray Read Free Book Online Page B

windows that soared three stories high. I remember standing on the pale pink marble floor in leather shoes that hurt my feet and staring at the piano, feeling the same itch in my fingers to play that I felt now. The piano was huge -- a concert grand, slick and black.
    I’d never seen anything like it. The owner of the house, Mr. Halprin, asked me if I knew how to play. When I mutely nodded, he gestured for me to show him.
    So, I did.
    I think he expected chopsticks or something, because as Mozart, Debussy, Chopin, even a little Lee Joplin -- I loved ragtime -- poured from my fingers, his smile grew wider and wider. I nearly cried with the joy of it as my music filled the room. I forgot the audience watching and listening, and I closed my eyes as the music took me in. I’d finish one piece, then go on to another, and another. My arms and back began to hurt, but I didn’t care. The sound was flawless, perfection. The keys smooth and alive beneath my fingers. I felt like I’d come home. Each strike of the hammer, each note, lifted me up to the ceiling and filled the aching loneliness that was my childhood.

    A Red-Tainted Silence
    31

    I didn’t want to stop, but finally I began to falter. A hand rested on my shoulder, startling me. I looked up then, blinking. I must’ve looked like an owl caught in bright sunlight, because Mr. Halprin burst out into deep-seated laughter. He didn’t say much else, but I do know that soon after that, I came home from school one day to find a baby grand sitting in the living room, the old upright and the couch and chair (there wasn’t room) gone.
    I always suspected Mr. Halprin had something to do with it, but my parents never said and I didn’t ask. At ten years old, I felt like I’d been reborn.
    My weekly chore was polishing the piano, one duty I never minded. Make me polish windows and I’d run screaming, but shove a bottle of piano polish and a rag into my hands, and I’d feel like bursting into song even though I’m a lousy singer. Adam thought I was loony, and he was probably right, but sometimes I’d polish that piano three or four times a week. I couldn’t explain then why I got such comfort from the simple task. I couldn’t explain a lot of my feelings back then.
    I looked at the baby grand that day after mom had forced me out of bed and decided it probably hadn’t been touched since I’d moved in with Adam. So, looking under the sink, I was happy to find a fairly new bottle of polish. I found a soft cloth and padded into the living room, smiling in anticipation of my task.
    For the next hour, I worked over that piano from end to end, rubbing away countless fingerprints, grimacing at the faint scratches from the blasted cat my mom briefly owned, finally finishing where I’d always finished when I was a kid -- lying down and stretched out beneath, my head situated next to the pedals, where I could look up at whatever imaginary pianist I could conjure. I’d imagined all kinds of famous people played my piano, like Elton John. I lived in an imaginary world a lot of the time when I was young -- it was much kinder to me than reality.
    The day I did sit down and play with the real Elton John, all my fantasies paled in comparison to the reality. But back then, who would’ve thought such a thing could happen to me?
    My mom had often come in whenever I was at that point. She would tease me, saying I didn’t need to polish underneath, too, but then she’d sit down on the bench and talk to me for a while. We’d had some great conversations that way, me finding it easier to talk to her while she looked sorta upside down at me than when we were face to face.
    The back door slammed. I heard her coming into the kitchen. “Brandon?”
    “In here,” I called out, grinning as I heard her laugh when she spied where I was.
    “Stay put, son. I’ll be there in a minute.”
    The floor was hard and I was getting a little chilly, but I didn’t move, just grinned like a fool as she