Love Songs: The Wrong Note - A Collection of Short Stories

Melody Ann's Gift

She played for them every Sunday morning and evening and on Wednesday nights, too. Each revival and special meeting found her seated behind the ivory keyboard of the baby grand piano, a magnificent creation more at home in a concert hall than in the small country church.

The polished ebony instrument shone with a luster of richness and opulence that demanded attention. Like the majestic fan of the peacock's tail, it was a proud, regal display of vanity.

As for the pianist, she must admit, although never publicly, that every time she chanced to sit at this shrine of human ingenuity, she couldn't help but feel a mark above her peers.

Holy somehow.

Looking down on the audience from her perch high on the platform at the front of the little church, she often imagined that there was something more than physical height that fueled these feelings of superiority, something in the very air around her that made her more reverent, and thus, much closer to God.

As she sat upon the stool, dwarfed by the size of the amazing musical miracle, she waited for the hush to fall upon those who had gathered to hear her play. Eventually, each one would look her way, anticipating – their hunger almost palpable – her rendition of an old, familiar hymn.

Her audience consisted of simple folk – farmers, mill workers, housewives, young people, and children under the watchful eyes of elders determined to squelch any squirms and worms at the first sign of an outbreak. All in the audience would raise their faces to her – guileless, youthful, work-weary, time-worn, wasted – skin over skulls.

Masks hiding the essence of their inner selves.

Only their eyes allowed her to glimpse their tragedy, their joy, their sickness, their suffering, or the unending boredom of their own mundane existences. Each was a vessel filled with his own songs of trial, of woe, of life.

Only their eyes told her that her playing broke the chains that choked their souls, and their eyes told her that she was able to fill their emptiness with chords of celestial wonder.

***

Her fingers danced upon the black and whites, melding to them with the gentleness of a lover's touch. She caressed the keys, coddled them, abused them, and like a lover who can touch that secret place deep inside his beloved, the piano responded to her in an orgy of rhythm and sound.

Beads of sweat formed on her brow, and her body rocked forward and back, now forward once more. Her arms were a blur of motion, pumping left, then right, flying away, and then moving in close again, as the sanctuary was flooded with notes of delight.

Melodic runs of finger-cramping complexity bounced on the air with gut-wrenching sadness, only to turn and climb to heights of heavenly ecstasy.

She could make the music say whatever she wanted it to, and when in a playful mood, the pianist and her consort performed the spirituals with a ragtime, honky tonk twang. Theirs was a union complete; their coupling fused two into one.

Each time she sat before the grand instrument, she gave herself willingly to her mate, letting him envelope her, losing her personality to the reverberating pulse of his hammered heartstrings, allowing his flowing curve to penetrate her, to possess her.

And while she made love in front of them, the audience was caught up in her rapture.

They found it easy to overlook the thick lenses wrapped in plastic frames that covered her face. They hardly noticed the unflattering cut of her dress and could easily make themselves blind to her overly bleached and jaundiced straw-like hair.