An Unmasked Hero

An Unmasked Hero Part Three

Lynn held her hand above the door marked 2054 in golden numbers. It was a pretty house. Being in the old part of town it was squished up against the other houses on the block making a picturesque recreation of an Amsterdam street without the canal running down it. The garden was well tended and bursting with flowers. The lawn was mowed finer than a crew cut on a newly minted sailor, and the few wooden surfaces of the house were freshly painted in a lush, deep black.

Finally Lynn built up the courage to knock. Almost as if she had been waiting behind the door the entire time, Mrs. Kelley opened it up and welcomed her in. She was dressed in a very professional looking jacket and an incredibly long skirt that any teenage girl would pray to never have to wear and a radiant pearl necklace that almost blinded the onlooker. Lynn assumed that Mrs. Kelley had just got back from work. It was also clear to Lynn that Peter did not inherit his “pudginess” from his mother.

“I was wondering when you’d come in, dear. Well, um, make yourself at in, Peters’ in the bathroom, but he’ll be out shortly and you too can go do your homework. His room is upstairs.”

Lynn nodded and smiled, just enough to make her cheeks curl and hurried down the cluttered, hardwood hallway to the stairs. In the distance she heard some very dramatic fights between younger brothers taking precedence over the studious, silent nature the senior brother was insisting was required for him to do his homework. Coming from the kitchen was the sound of a sister, chopping vegetables and organizing various events over the phone with her friends. Lynn climbed the spiralling staircase (as if to make the European illusion complete) and at the top found the most beautiful grand piano that she had ever laid eyes. Its ivory keys simply begged to be touched. Lynn could not resist the allure of it. She didn’t just play that piano, she caressed the keys, her fingers lulled a magnificent sound from its oaky base. The strings of the instrument hummed a tune sweet enough at times to fill pies and pastry to diabetic levels, and sad enough at times to make potted plants consider suicide. Her magic fingers danced across the keys like a ballerina in some famous Russian epic. Nothing could have better in the world.

“You play beautifully.”

Lynn hands lashed out at the keys in shock and made a most distasteful chord. She hopped from her seat in fright.

“It’s okay, Lynn,” Peter spoke in his best soothing voice. “We got it after my grandma died. None of us ever learned to play the darn thing, if you can believe that. After hearing you, I guess I’ll have to start.”

Lynn still stared at him a deer caught in the head lights.

"Lynn, are you mute?” Peter asked, his eyebrows furrowed in an inquisitive nature.

“No,” Lynn solemnly refuted in such a way as to rest all doubts.

Peter grinned, self satisfied. “Good,” he said, “it would have made it incredibly difficult to perform our skit if you were.” Peter gestured for Lynn to follow him. “Come on we need to get to work, I’ll show you my room.”

Peter rushed down the picture clustered, white carpeted hallway with a very reluctant Lynn in tow. At the end of the corridor was a door marked with a skull and crossbones and the words written in a bleeding black ink: CAPTAINʼS QUARTERS. Peter opened the door and invited Lynn inside. The room’s contents were almost exactly the way Lynn would have imagined. A neatly made bed and a desk parallel to each other and a dresser on opposite corners were ordinary enough, but those were the only things Peter had that weren’t unique. His walls were speckled with numerous National Geographic posters and various political and geographic maps. His room occupying the top of the east wing of the house had a very large inclined ceiling that was almost entirely bedecked with a myriad of flags dominated by the Algonquian Bowmen of Massachusetts. Over his desk was a WALL OF HEROES were Peter had hung portraits of Homer, Shakespeare, John Adams, Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Tom Brady and a whole collection of obscure figures that Lynn could never hope to identify. Over his bed was a ROMNEY: 2012 poster. Peter pulled out a chair from his desk and offered it to Lynn and then sat down with a heavy thud on his bed opposite to her.