Muscle Memory
#2 Piano
-/-
The funeral is by far the least anticipated part of a really unhappy few weeks. It's crowded and foggy and everyone's wearing black and he's supposed to stand there on display, crying like a good little bereaved son and accepting handfuls of pity from strangers who only know him from photographs at his parents' workplaces. He's sick of it before they even get to the cemetery – by bus, because the car got repossessed – because he knows exactly what's going to happen. The priest is going to ramble on about this woman he didn't know and every time he uses the past tense, it's going to drill a little further in that she's really dead, and even if there's no body in the casket there must be one getting eaten by crabs in the ocean.
Marco doesn't have to believe it, he knows. People would understand if he was still convinced she was alive and just taking a long time getting home. But he's the practical sort. He knows there isn't any point clinging to hope that a woman can swim for five weeks straight.
Still, the priest doesn't have to rub it in.
There's a reception after the funeral, which is even worse. It's just an excuse for people he doesn't know to talk about how weird it is to bury a coffin with nobody in it, and how sad it is that Peter lost his wife and his job so close together, God bless him, and she was so young, blah blah blah. He and his dad sit at a fold-up plastic table. His dad just stares blankly at the cold potato salad with red-rimmed, swollen eyes. Marco stops politely acknowledging all the adults who come over to give him pitying hugs, tell him in baby talk that they're sorry for his loss, as if he's a little kid, as if it's their God-given goal to spend the day reminding him he lost something. Finally, after one person too many reminds him that he has her eyes, he storms out, knocking over one of those stand-up platters full of tiny sandwiches. People stare, but if there's any day to excuse bad behavior, they suppose that this is it.
After pushing his way through however many rooms in the funeral home have people in them, he ends up in what must be a room for entertainment. White carpet, chandelier, big piano in the corner with the lid propped up. Probably for weddings, and he thinks that it's probably a harbinger of great things if you're going to get married right next to where they're burying dead people. So romantic.
The first thing Marco does is snarl and knock the piano lid back down, then scuff his dirty shoes all over the fluffy carpet. Fine, make whomever cleans it up as pissed off as he is. He slams the heels of his shoes into the carpet until his legs are shaking and he's breathing hard.
And then, looking for something else to take his anger out on, he turns to the piano, and knocks the sheet music onto the floor, slams his hand down on some of the low notes, stomp on the pedals. He took piano lessons for about a year when he was eight, because his mom made him, even though he hated it. He dreaded every Wednesday when they'd go to lessons and the teacher would chastise him for not practicing, and his mother would purse her lips and barely contain her irritation, and he'd just be more determined to do everything off-tempo and with as little grace as he could muster.
Silly thing to be angry about now.
He takes a breath, trying again to hold back the tears that have been itching at the back of his eyes all day. Silly, to remember the fights they had over the stupid piano, until she was so fed up with it she let him quit. Stupid fights over stupid things, stupid memories he never thought he'd miss, stupid memories because it makes it a little bit easier to let go when she's not a saint, makes it a bit harder to let go when she's a human being. Was a human being.
He doesn't remember the position, the note names, the verses. Flickers of muscle memory inform him a few lines of songs he used to know. The notes don't sound like they do in his memory and he tells himself it's because of the stupid piano being out of tune, not that it's because he's playing the wrong keys. But before Jake's mother comes to find him and ask if he and his dad would like a ride home now, he does manage a halting, one-and-a-half handed version of "Send in the Clowns".