It led to a smaller living room decorated in cozy shades of red and furniture in dark mahogany. A big window let in lots of light, and a piano stood by a set of leather armchairs and a matching sofa. A knot formed in Gunner’s stomach at the sight of several framed diplomas boasting about Caspian’s achievements. Could a person claim brain damage to explain why they couldn’t play music anymore?
Gunner hadn’t touched a piano since he was twelve, and even then, it had been just for fun. He’d already grown tall, and Dad wanted to groom him into an enforcer at his motorcycle club, so he’d set Gunner up with a boxing trainer. Gunner had expected the same kind of punch-or-be-punched schooling he got at home, but Mr. Wagner had been a different kind of man than Dad and his friends.
The Wagner house hadn’t been as grand as the one belonging to Caspian’s family, but it was clean and cozy, with a small garden where Gunner got to train most days. Mrs. Wagner filled it with music whenever she had students over, but she played for fun as well and encouraged Gunner to improvise sometimes. The streams and rivulets of classical music would often flow through the open windows when he trained with Mr. Wagner, and it hadn’t been love at first note for him at all.
If anything, he’d initially found the music jarring, as if it wasn’t meant for him and represented a world where he wasn’t welcome. He’d been an angry child, an angry teenager, and hadn’t grown into the most well-adjusted adult, but Mr. Wagner had recognized his attitude off the bat and had become a mentor Gunner’s dad could never be. He sneakily introduced Gunner to classical music by convincing him he’d be a better boxer if he used it to clear his mind and stay calm under pressure.
Mr. Wagner had taught him to store his fury for the fight and to focus his thoughts on technique instead of unleashing the storm raging inside him at a whim. Gunner never quite mastered those lessons, but he tried his best, and the stillness he experienced when secretly listening to Beethoven or Mozart remained his anchor to this day.
Classical music reminded him of being invited to family dinners with the Wagners, and getting to press keys on the piano to make sounds—because what he did couldn’t be called playing. Of meals that didn’t come from a microwave or a blender, of getting to play with their cat, and being allowed to decorate cookies, because in the Wagner household it wasn’t considered a woman’s job, but a fun activity for the whole family.
His friends wouldn’t have understood his taste in music, so he kept it hidden. But no matter how much he loved the brilliant tone of the piano, he couldn’t play it.
Still, with no one to watch him, he might as well press some keys before he got inevitably unmasked as a fraud.
The instrument called to him without making a sound, and when Gunner sat in front of it and saw his reflection in the polished oak, memories took him back to a moment when Mrs. Wagner had sat on a cushioned bench alongside him and taught him how to perform a simple duet. His own digits had looked so clumsy in comparison to her long and narrow fingers, but he’d learned to play that melody by heart and had performed it for Mr. Wagner’s sister when she came to visit from Florida.
No one ever shouted at him in their home. And he’d never left hungry, as if they knew his father didn’t always remember to keep the fridge full. They’d been the best people Gunner had ever met, but they’d moved away when he was only fifteen, and the lifeline they offered had broken.
Still, he was overcome with a sense of nostalgia as he uncovered the keys and put Caspian’s graceful fingers on their smooth white surface. He still remembered how to play the C-major scale and smiled when his index finger pressed the keys one by one, making the instrument sing. Its sound wasn’t as clear as it ought to be, just off-key, as if it hadn’t been tuned in a long time, but the tremor that accompanied each note was almost welcome. Even if Caspian himself were here to play, the music wouldn’t have come out perfect. Gunner picked up a thin book of sheet music from a stack that lay on top of the piano, alongside a metronome and a wooden bust of Frederick Chopin, and opened it on the first page.
It was Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’, but what he saw below the title wasn’t just a meaningless tangle of symbols written into rows of staffs.
When he took in the sheet, the music spoke to him as if it were an alphabet of sounds, as easy to read as a short newspaper article. His heart skipped a beat in reaction to the melody already playing out in his mind, and he put his fingers on the keys without needing to look down. His body knew exactly where to start the soft, melancholic tune, and he didn’t need to question the score in front of him.