The family piano never sat silent for long.
Everyone knew Lucille Tracy was an accomplished pianist. As the eldest daughter of the late Noèle Durant, world-class virtuoso, she was expected to play, and play she did. No local wedding or Christmas service was complete without a performance from Lucille. Everyone who heard her play agreed she inherited her mother's talent.
Few people knew Jeff Tracy also played the piano. Not as well as his wife, not as often, and not when company was over, but he knew a select repertoire of pieces. Sometimes, on the dates that meant the most to them, he would even sing while playing, deep and rich and soft.
It came as no surprise that Scott, aged four, asked to learn how to play the piano. What was surprising was that he asked Jeff, not Lucille, to teach him.
John, of course, had to do whatever Scott was doing, and he insisted on learning as well. Lucille collected a whole stack of photos of Jeff sitting on the piano bench with a little boy tucked against each side, little feet dangling high above the pedals and the floor as they mimicked Jeff's movements.
Virgil ignored the piano—unless Lucille and only Lucille was playing. No one was sure how he did it, but once she settled in front of the keyboard, he would come running from all corners of the house, fingers sticky with paint, to press his back firm and flat against the bottom panel, watching her feet work the pedals. He outright refused all attempts to get him to play; not even the sight of the two older brothers he tried to mimic in every way possible practicing was enough to coax him onto the bench... until he sat down one day not long after he turned six and played by ear and with only a few stumbles a piece John had been struggling with only a few hours ago.
Gordon went through phases of playing—some days he would spend several hours at the piano, and then weeks could go by before he chose to touch it again. But for all his boisterous emotion and impulsive decisions, when he did sit down in front of the piano, his playing was dominated by a strict sense of timing that overruled even Virgil's instinctive understanding of music. Drum lessons were added to the mix, and he excelled until the day he switched to swimming.
Lucille never got the chance to teach Alan how to play anything more complex than scales. It fell to John to help him further his skills after Lucille's death—Scott didn't have time, Virgil refused to acknowledge the piano's existence, and Gordon wasn't patient enough to teach him. John had the time, the interest, and the patience, and he spent hours with Alan tucked on his lap, little fingers plonking on keys until melody began to form. The first song Alan learned to play in full was "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," and it was the first song he played for John after he switched to guitar lessons.
The family piano was originally a mahogany upright grand.
Not quite old enough to be an antique, it was a gift from Noèle to her daughter. For twelve years it sat in its place of pride in the living room, entertaining family and guests alike. Many hands and combinations of hands played it, and the number of framed photos on top grew larger at the same rate members were added to the household. Lucille tried to keep it safe from messy fingers, but little boys easily forgot to wash their hands before sitting down to play, and some stains refused to rub out.
Jeff surprised Lucille on their tenth wedding anniversary by bringing her to a piano store and inviting her to pick one out. Business was doing well, he said, and it was hard to play a piano the way she deserved to when three keys were superglued to the keybed. Inside of a week, a glossy black parlor grand piano replaced the mahogany upright, which found a new home in the boys' playroom. The novelty of having a newer, bigger, nicer piano to play on lasted several weeks for the boys before it became routine once more.
Both pianos survived the long-distance move from the States to a tiny island in the southern Pacific after Lucille's untimely death. The parlor grand sat untouched and neglected behind Jeff's desk, where he didn't have to look at it unless he purposely chose to, but it was always there, a silent reminder of what was lost and what was to be.
The upright grand ended up in John's room, since he and Alan were the only ones who used it. The stuck keys were a challenge for John to play around, and Alan enjoyed transposing tunes from piano to guitar and back again. Sometimes they would take turns at the piano while the other mapped the heavens with John's telescope; other times Scott or Gordon or both would join them, and they stayed up late talking about everything and anything and nothing.
Virgil never joined them. Not in John's room. Anywhere else was fine.
And then, late one night just over a year after they settled into their island home, John returned to his room after stargazing to find Virgil tucked up under the piano for the first time in years. John didn't need to look at the calendar to know the date.
He settled on the bench and let his fingers drift across the keys. Improvisation eventually turned into Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14—"Mom's Song," the boys called it, because she played it so often. Halfway through the first movement, Virgil rested his head on John's knee and finally allowed himself to mourn the loss of both his mother and what she meant to him.
The next morning found him and John sitting at the parlor grand playing a duet, and though no one said the words, they all thought them: life is finally returning to the household.
The family piano has never just been a piano.
Alan spends more time in John's room at the battered, paint-smeared upright than seated at the larger, sleeker version in the lounge. He prefers the quiet intimacy of a connection he knows is weaker than the ones his brothers shared with their mom, but he's all too happy to pile around the parlor grand with his siblings to chat and poke fun and enjoy the peace while it lasts. Somehow—and it's probably just his imagination—Mom seems even closer, like she's hovering in their midst, than she does when he's plunking out scales he only remembers due to diligent practice.
During the longest, most arduous rescues, when the tension reaches unbearable, Gordon finds himself sitting on the piano bench, trapped halfway between the news he dreads most and the release of the pool. His brothers can be in all manner of danger, staring disaster square in the eye, but somehow it's easier to believe everything is going to turn out okay when he's sitting so close to the glossy black heart of the family.
Music is Virgil's comfort after tragedy, his voice when he has no words, his connection to the world when he's fraying at the seams, his outpouring of joy when there's something worth celebrating. Music is Virgil's friend, as much as any of his brothers are, and since friends are meant to be shared, there are few things he enjoys more than when one of his brothers appears at his elbow so he can scoot down the bench and make room for another warm—breathing, alive—body and another pair of skilled—gentle, life-saving—hands. They're not Mom, but that's okay—every note he plays is an ode to her, a promise that he won't ever again give up what she loved best.
Whenever John's dirtside, he makes a point of sitting down at the piano—simple scales run across the one in his room first to shake off the space dust; then in the lounge, meticulous pieces that require concentration and dexterity, a maintenance of skills taught by both parents. More than his brothers, he likes the challenge of performing, and whatever family is around will inevitably migrate into the room, enjoying the display of skill from their individual perches, present but not crowding close, sharing a quiet sort of camaraderie. Sometimes—and it's probably just his imagination—he can feel a hand on his shoulder while he's playing, even though there's no one there.
Between saving lives, paperwork, maintenance, and all manner of brother wrangling, Scott rarely finds time to actually put fingers to keys, but he doesn't mind. Just being in the lounge and listening to melodies rising into the cooled air is usually enough for him, knowing his brothers pulled through another day spent snatching people from the jaws of death. After difficult days, after explosions and losses of temper and new graves that are a bit too similar to an old one, he'll slide onto the bench beside whoever's already there and add his hands wherever they're needed: on the keys or around a set of weary shoulders, a promise to stay together for what time they've been given.
Jeff doesn't play anymore. Years ago, he played to win that soft, infatuated smile from Lucille; after, he played to delight of his boys in addition to a smile even softer, more content than infatuated. But he's reached the point where not playing is okay. Her legacy isn't his to uphold, not when it comes to music, and though the process has been long, slow, arduous, each day he accepts the fact a little more whenever one or more of his sons take their place at the bench to once more bring Lucille back to life.