Joplin's Ghost (42 page)

Gazing at her sister, Phoenix felt a sudden inspiration, pointing at her. “Sing with me Friday night!” she said. “You’ll rehearse with me and my crew, and it’ll be great.
Please?
”

Serena looked startled, and her automatic headshaking began. When Serena opened her mouth to decline, she was drowned out. Finally, Serena stood up and surveyed the room as if she were already taking the stage. “OK, ya’ll know what? Last week Trey was riding me, and Gloria’s been riding me, and Phoenix has
never
let up. If ya’ll want me to get up and make a fool of myself in front of two thousand people…
I’ll do it
.”

“Reenie, for real?” Phoenix said. Her heart, like the room, had gone silent.

Serena grinned from molar to molar, raising her arms in surrender. “How am I gonna teach Trey to go for what he wants in the world if his own mama won’t do it?”

Phoenix shrieked and leaped from her seat, giving Serena a hug. Phoenix could feel her sister’s heart galloping in her chest, genuine terror.

“
Mazel tov,
ladies!” Aunt Livvy said, and everyone applauded. By the time their hug ended, both Serena and Phoenix were blinking away tears.

The radio suddenly went silent, the sound system’s panel losing its light. Phoenix saw Sarge fiddle with the knobs and dials, even checking the plug, but the components refused to come back on. In Phoenix’s old life, an occurrence like that meant nothing. Now, nothing slipped her notice. Scott’s hand was everywhere.

“Forget it, Daddy,” Phoenix said.

Sarge gave her a puzzled look.

“Oh, here we go,” Gloria said, rolling her eyes. “Phoenix and her ghost again.”

“
Please
don’t try to freak us out with your ghost stories,” Serena said.

Aunt Livvy’s eyes came to Phoenix’s, pale lasers. “What ghost stories?”

“You tell me yours first, Aunt Livvy,” Phoenix said. “What happened with you and that piano at the Silver Slipper?”

Aunt Livvy gasped, and her half-empty can of Heineken dropped to the coffee table, nearly falling over. She and Uncle Dave steadied it. No one else was drinking beer at midday. Mom thought her sister drank too much. “I can’t believe you brought that up!” she said. “I was just thinking about that. Dave and I saw a piano being moved on the street today, and it gave me
shivers
. To this day, I won’t have a piano in the house. Tell her, Dave.”

“Oh, she won’t.” Uncle Dave looked annoyed, flipping the page of his
Time Out New York
while a string of his thinning hair fell across his glasses. He had always reminded Phoenix of a mad professor. “My wife is insane.”

“He’s still livid. Last year, the father of one of our partners died, and Mitch wanted to
give
us this beautiful cranberry concert grand piano. I said we couldn’t take it because we don’t have room, but I
cannot
have a piano in my house, not after that other one.”

Mom shrugged. “I never knew what scared you so much that day. I was—”

“In school,” Aunt Livvy finished, shaking her finger with the excitement of a rediscovered memory. “That’s right, because I was four and you were seven. And while you’re at school, Mom and Dad are schlepping me around the Slipper all day. I
hated
that place.”

“Really? Phee and I loved it there,” Gloria said, gnawing on her crust. “Beer on tap.”

Mom gave Phoenix an unhappy look, and Phoenix passed it on to Gloria.
Good going, loudmouth.
Phoenix had hated the taste of beer at twelve, but Gloria loved sneaking sips.

“Thanks for reminding me what a lying terror you were, Glo,” Aunt Livvy said. “Anyway, I’m four years old, and it’s a Friday afternoon. On Fridays, I’m alone with Pop because Mom is with her mother at the home from noon to three every week. And Pop’s going nuts trying to keep the place running, racing up and down the stairs, taking meetings, futzing with mikes and shit on the stage. And he’d sit me in his office in this big, cracked, leather chair, and say, ‘Olivia, you stay right here,’ and then I don’t see him again in God-knows-how-long. There was always something going on at this place. Everybody came through the Slipper in those days, I’m talking about 1960. Jackie Gleason, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole. And let’s not forget Sam Giancana in the audience, and sometimes he’d bring friends. I had no idea at the time, of course—all grown-ups are equally boring when I’m four—but Pop loved to brag about meeting famous people. Pop’s killing himself to make everything go right, the perfect this and that so nobody goes away unimpressed. Pop thought the sun rose and set on the place, you have no idea.”

“God, yes,” Mom murmured sadly, nodding. Grandpa Bud had lied about his income for years to pay his debts and try to keep his supper club’s doors open, and one day his lies had caught up to him. Unlike Serena and Malcolm, Mom and Aunt Livvy had been fully grown when their father went to prison. He died soon after serving two years for tax evasion, and Mom said he’d never been the same. In elementary school, Phoenix had loved telling her friends that both her father
and
grandfather had been to prison, before she’d learned to feel embarrassed by it.

“So this particular Friday, I’m sick to death of sitting in Pop’s chair, which is annoying anyway because it squeaks when it spins. I wander to the next room, which is this storeroom upstairs. The door to this room is always closed, but that day it’s wide-open. I’m a kid, I’m bored, so naturally I want to know what’s in this room.”

Phoenix felt goose bumps race up her arms. She glanced toward Gloria, who was already looking at her.

“I can just barely reach the light switch to turn it on. It takes me three tries. The room is full of all kinds of crap, but the only thing I remember is this
piano
sitting there, like it’s waiting for something. I’m only four, but I can tell this thing is ancient. This is an ugly piano, like it’s been in there a million years without any light. Like it’s mad because it’s forgotten how to make music. The minute I see this piano, I’m sorry I left Pop’s office. I close my eyes and start to back away from it the way I used to back away from that maniac dog our neighbor had, the one that was always biting little kids. And then I bump the back of my head on something in the doorway.”

“The door had closed?” Phoenix said.

“The
door
had
closed
?” Aunt Livvy said, snorting. “Please. Sweetie, I
wish
it was just the door had closed. No, when I turn around…”

“I remember you telling this part,” Mom said, nodding. “You were hysterical.”

“…
The piano has moved
. One second this ugly piano is in front of me, and the next second it’s behind me. How do I know it wasn’t there before? Because I can’t get around this damn thing, it’s so big. This piano is
blocking
the doorway. I can’t even see over it. I scream for Pop, but he doesn’t come. I am desperate to get out of this room. As scared as I am of this mean piano, I try to push it, but the thing weighs a ton. I climb on the keys, making a racket, but then I’m scared to try to jump off the top, it’s so tall. In my memory, this piano is fifty feet high. And I distinctly remember feeling like this piano would be
glad
if it hurt me.”

Phoenix had only taken one bite of her pizza, mostly to please Mom, but what little appetite she had fled. Serena sucked in her breath, and Malcolm was leaning closer so he could hear each word. Phoenix felt sure she knew what Aunt Livvy was going to say before she spoke.

“Leah, you talk about hysterical? I had a nervous breakdown. I climbed down off that piano and had a tantrum like never before, crying, my nose plugged, I can’t breathe. But then—and here’s the blessing of being four years old—I just curled there on the concrete floor and went to sleep. The next thing I know, I hear Pop calling for me from down the hall, and that piano was back where it was in the beginning. Like nothing had happened. And when I got home, none of the geniuses in my family would believe a word I said.”

“Livvy, you were
four,
” Mom said, as if she still was. “That’s such a wild story. How can you trust a memory from when you were that young?”

“Damn right I was four. And it’s
because
I was four that I’ll never forget it.”

“So, wait…” Serena said. “Is that the same piano that fell on Phee down the stairs? Because
that’s
what I remember. That was in 1991.” Serena had spent two weeks with her family the year Phoenix was in the hospital. That was when Phoenix and her sister had become friends, as Serena read her Bible verses and tried to make sure her soul was saved.

“It’s the same piano,” Phoenix said. She knew that now, if she hadn’t before.

Aunt Livvy shook her head. “When I think you had it in your
home,
Leah! I have no idea what was going through your mind.”

“Don’t blame me,” Mom said. “After that accident, I wanted nothing to do with it. Marcus is the one who brought it to our house.”

“Hey, now—hold up,” Sarge said. He was fully reclined in the room’s office chair, his sock feet propped on the desk near the window, where he had a panoramic view of midtown. He hadn’t said anything in so long, Phoenix had almost forgotten he was in the room. But that was Sarge. He chose his moments. “Wasn’t me. The thing was waiting for me on the porch.”

Mom turned to him, wide-eyed. “What are you saying?
You
didn’t bring it?”

“I figured you’d hired somebody yourself. It surprised me, but…”

“That isn’t funny, Marcus,” Mom said, her voice a warning. “I mean it.”

Sarge shrugged, refusing to retract his story. Phoenix’s goose bumps flared. She’d played a piano that had brought itself to her doorstep. That piano had bewitched her somehow.

“All of ya’ll need to stop fooling,” Serena said. “For real.”

“What happened that day the piano fell, Phoenix?” Sarge said. “Tell me the truth.”

“We
told
you the truth,” Gloria said. “We left the piano in the storeroom. When we came back, it was at the top of the stairs.”

“She’s right, Sarge,” Phoenix said. “We thought maybe Mr. Bell’s sons had moved it. But maybe not. Maybe it moved itself. Like…the way it got to our house.”

That idea would have blown her mind two weeks ago, Phoenix realized. Not today.

A long silence followed. Uncle Dave shook his head, disbelieving. Serena shivered, rubbing her elbows. Malcolm let out a whistle while he sat back and crossed his long legs, his ankle to his kneecap. His dress socks were bright white. “
Dag
. I would have chopped that piano up for firewood after all that,” Malcolm said.

“Shoot, I thought about it,” Sarge said. “But Phoenix was attached to it.”

“I still refuse to believe you didn’t bring it home, Marcus. You just don’t remember,” Mom said. “Believe me, it was the biggest eyesore you ever saw.”

“It was that, all right,” Sarge said. “But my memory is fine. Three in the afternoon, I show up at home, and there’s the piano. I wanted to cuss out the movers for leaving it outside.”

Everyone else could remember that piano better than she could, Phoenix thought. When she tried to visualize it, she could only see the ghostly piano that had appeared in Carlos’s bedroom, the one in her dream, not the real one she’d seen as a child. She remembered taking Gloria to the storeroom, the accident, having the piano at the house, everything except how it had looked, exactly, or why she’d wanted anything to do with it. The Queen Psychic was right: That piano had something to do with her connection to Joplin. If she found it again, she might be able to make their connection stronger.

“Mom, do you remember who bought that piano from you?” Phoenix said.

Mom sighed, planting her palm on her forehead. “Oh, wow, that’s been forever. Not off the top of my head. Marcus?” Sarge was already shaking his head. “Well, I’m my mother’s daughter, so I bet I have it in a file at home somewhere.”

Serena suddenly stood up. “Can we change the subject? I can’t stand scary stories. Phee, where’s the thermostat? This room is cold as hell.”

Serena was right, Phoenix realized. The room was so cold, the tips of her fingers were smarting, which she’d assumed before now was from the cold soda can. The others exchanged glances, realizing how suddenly the cold had come. Phoenix expelled a strong breath of air and saw the faintest trace of mist. Serena tried, too, puffing air into her palm. Then she looked at Phoenix, her eyes wild with questions.

“Nobody panic,” Phoenix said. “But I don’t think it’s the thermostat.”

As soon as she spoke, the lights in the room flared, then switched off abruptly. If not for the sunshine through the picture window, the living room would have gone dark.

“Phee, I don’t know who’s paying for this room, but somebody’s gettin’ played,” Malcolm said, just before her bedroom door behind them slammed shut. The sharp sound made Serena and Livvy scream. Gloria looked startled, her eyes casing the room. Even Uncle Dave’s face had gone gray. He yanked off his glasses, staring over his shoulder at the door.