Piano Lessons

This story is by E. I. Fitzgerald and was part of our 2024 Spring Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

Wendy feels the asphalt cooking her back through the sweat-soaked button-up her mom laid out this morning. It’s going to stain.

A bee walks in the small triangle of grass shaded by the pitiful sapling Mr. Wilson planted to compete with the new organic store. Wendy wonders if Mrs. Wilson told him what a stupid idea that was.

The bee buzzes industriously on a clover. She read once a hive can produce two pounds of honey a day. What must that be like? Working for hours and hours, and how long do they live? A month?

She can’t imagine working so hard only for some hand to reach in and steal it all to spread on toast or squeeze into a matcha latte.

“Your mom’s gonna kill you if that gets dirty.”

She turns her eyes from the bee that’s found a dandelion, and looks up to a familiar figure in a black smock—he’s come straight from work.

“I got Jamba Juice,” he says.

The smell of the mall wafts toward her as Sasza collapses to the pavement—coffee, fried dough, and too much body spray. Wendy sits up as he shoves a cup into her hands. She sloshes orange smoothie onto the front of her white shirt.

When he drinks, she sees a line of smudged pinks and oranges on his forearm.

“How much of your paycheck did you blow on make-up?”

The smoothie is too sweet but nice in the summer sun.

“None. But…” Sasza pauses for dramatic effect. “I may have spent my lunch break at the Cinnabon. And I may have gotten a whole box so the idiot behind the counter had to take longer.”

“You’re evil.”

“He dropped the whole box and had to bend over to pick each one up.”

“And stupid,” Wendy adds.

“Nice view though,” he says with a shameless grin. “What about you? Any luck?”

She sighs.

“Mom’s gonna be on my ass.” She closes her eyes and presses the cold cup against her cheek. “Like always.”

“Your mom is a goddamn delight.”

“She doesn’t nag you. You’re her favorite child and you’re not even a part of the family.”

“Probably,” he agrees unapologetically.

She drinks her smoothie and listens to Sasza gossip about the mall: how Pretzel Girl cheated on Frozen Yogurt Guy, and how Tilly from high school got caught smuggling a coffee pot out of a store in her sweatshirt.

They finish their smoothies, and the sun is low in the sky, but they linger. Wendy because she doesn’t want to face another interrogation, and Sasza because of his father, but their stomachs are growling now.

“Time to face the music,” Sasza says, dusting off the seat of his skinny jeans.

“You could spend the night?” And the bonus is her mom won’t badger her too much. “Dad did the groceries, so there’s a tub of cheesy puffs.”

He looks wistful but then wilts.

“Nah. I shouldn’t do dairy. And besides, I need to split. Gotta spend some quality time with dad.”

They both know it’s a lie. His father doesn’t do bonding.

She nudges her shoulder against his.

“If you change your mind…”

He leans against her but jolts when his phone starts ringing.

“Shit.” Sasza scrambles to pull the phone out of his pocket. “Shit.”

He salutes her as he heads off, all smiles, but she sees the expression drop from his face just before he turns around. The tie on his work smock trails on the ground as he leaves.

She forgoes the bus to save money and walks home. Her license, or lack thereof, is another point of contention with her mother.

By the time she gets home, her back is drenched in sweat. The door is unlocked. She looks down but only sees her dad’s shoes in the entryway, so her mom must still be at work.

Dinner is lasagna from the fridge, which she takes to her room, saying a brief greeting to her dad on the way. Later, when she hears a car pull up, she shuts off her light.

She gets through the next morning without seeing either parent. They’ve already gone to work, and there’s another shirt laid out for her, along with a stack of freshly printed resumes.

Wendy passes the day as she does most days lately—wandering around air-conditioned stores not buying anything. Occasionally, she picks up an application to appease her mom. She meets Sasza in the parking lot in the evening, and this time he brings iced coffees and they play Anywhere but Here.

After many rounds where he keeps naming the guy at the Cinnabon, and she runs through every country in Europe, they part ways. It’s dark, so she takes the bus.

The TV is off when she gets home. No one in sight. She heads to the kitchen for a snack but finds the light already on. Inside, she finds her mom sitting at the table.

Wendy nearly backs out, snack be damned. She rehearsed the whole bus ride home how to spin her latest failed job search, but it was hot and her button-up was sweaty, so she didn’t come up with much.  She doesn’t want to have another fight tonight, but the sight before her stops her in her tracks.

Wendy’s never seen her mom in this state. Half in work clothes, halfway to changing into pajamas, and wholly unkempt.

“You never went back to piano lessons.”

Wendy startles.

“I let your dad be in charge, and once you complained about the tutor he didn’t take you back. It was my fault. You two came home with milkshakes.”

“I didn’t like the piano.”

She’d wanted to play the trumpet because it sounded like an elephant, and that kind of thing was important to a seven-year-old. Her mom wanted the piano.

Her mom looks up. Even in the kitchen’s dim lighting, she can see her mom’s expression. Her mouth is downturned like it has been for years.

She expects her mom to argue.

“No, you didn’t,” she agrees.

Wendy sees a photo album on the table. She recognizes it from the bookshelf in the living room. They have a few like it—mostly of her parents fresh-faced and newlywed, and of Wendy when she was young and cute.

“How was work?” she asks, wincing even as she asks.

“Did I ever show you my college photos?”

She beckons Wendy over, patting the chair beside hers.

Wendy hesitates. She could beg off, saying she’s tired, and then retreat to her room, but her mom is so uncharacteristically calm, so deflated.

She sits beside her, and her mom turns the album so she can see.

“My first day in the dorms-” her mom gestures to a photo of younger her with a wedge haircut, big button-shaped earrings, and a lime green shirt, standing in front of a twin bed in a shoebox room “-and this is when I studied abroad.” She’s standing in front of the Eiffel Tower with longer hair and a fanny pack.

“I didn’t know you went to Paris.”

Wendy leans in closer. Photo mom smiles, arm thrown around the shoulder of a girl with a side ponytail.

Wendy turns the pages to look at more of this smiling girl. She hardly recognizes her. There’s little resemblance between the fearless-looking girl standing in front of a biplane, and the woman beside her with frown lines under her bottom lip and bags under her eyes.

She tries to see something in common—like a game of I Spy, only instead of looking for a wrench or a beetle, she’s looking for pieces of that brash twenty-something. She was never good at those games, she usually gave up.

“I don’t want you to settle, Wends. Not like me.” There’s pain in her mom’s voice. Wendy feels her own throat stop up.

The kitchen is silent, save for the gurgle-hum of the fridge. No cars go past in a small town at night.

Wendy wonders what the young woman in the photo dreamt about. Did she think she’d live overseas, in France or the Philippines?

She wonders if her mother would have married if she could do it all again.

Her mom’s fingers spread over the photo album—between them peeks a photo of her, maybe Wendy’s age, grinning, hair whipping in the wind.

They’re not touchy-feely people. They don’t hug when they come home or kiss goodbye, but she reaches out now and sets her hand on top of her mom’s. She feels the fingers twitch beneath hers, and thinks she might brush her off.

Wendy almost pulls away, but then her mom turns her hand palm up.

They sit there for a while, hand on hand, not talking.

“I always thought I’d learn the piano,” her mom says eventually. “Never got around to it.”

They sit a while after that, looking through photos. Her mother never mentions the stain on Wendy’s shirt.