Three Piano Movers and a Mother-in-Law

Well, it was emotional hijacking, but very much welcomed.

Not to say needed. I had had a waking dream of Franny, something that I rarely do. Is it that my conscious brain has been dealing with her so actively? Has my subconscious gotten bored with the thing and gone on to something else? Certainly, two or three months ago, I decided ¡ya! Enough already! Franny Shmanny—drop it!!!

Well, there she was in my dream last night, full of piss and vinegar. Jack, too.

“She doesn’t know she’s dead,” I was telling Jack.

“I know, she’s driving me crazy…”

So I was telling Franny she was dead, and sobbing a bit into the pillow. Then I woke up, wondering…

…is she dead?

Certainly wasn’t last night. She was about fifty—well, that sort of makes sense. I would have been 14 when she was fifty—just at that stage where parents become people. And I remember the remark that prompted the realization.

“Milo Flaten is sort of a horse’s ass….”

She flung it off carelessly, a little aside. And wow, she had a comedian’s timing, too.

Floored me.

Well, she could do that. Remember the first time she met Raf’s parents?

It hadn’t been easy for them—doña Ilia and don Quique—to get past their son’s being gay. It wasn’t like now, when I peer at the contact list on their refrigerator door. Quico and Mayra, Frankie and Lucy, Ito and Marc…

…with our telephone numbers beside the names.

Our first meeting was stiff, but cordial. Later, Raf was told that he could include me in family gatherings. I got on my high horse and refused to go.

Wasn’t an invitation.

At about this time, we moved to this street. Mr. Fernández had decreed that the process could be done gradually, a chair or two at a time.

Yeah?

I have just gone into the living room, to count all the stuff.

Three sofas, nine side chairs, three large chairs, seven side tables, one huge china cabinet, a dresser on which rests the treasured photo of Her Supreme Majesty, three large Oriental rugs, an easel on which rests two good paintings by Taí, sixteen tons of bric-a-brac and…

…the baby grand piano.

And we were gonna move all this stuff by ourselves?

Well, we did, mostly. I’d grab a chair, Raf a table, and we’d start off.

Fortunately, it was downhill.

Unfortunately, it was past a seedy bar filled with drunks.

All of whom were laughing themselves silly at us.

Well, it was ridiculous.

Nor, apparently, did they approve of any of our furnishings.

OK, look, Victoriana is not everybody’s favorite style.

Well, a side chair is one thing. A baby grand another. Franny came to Puerto Rico, to observe all this foolishness, and to check out the new digs.

Bringing her little camera with her. Fortunate, too, because she documented the whole thing.

Quite literally. I put my foot down—that piano was gonna be professionally moved.

I had imagined lifts and cranes, pulleys, ropes, weights and counter weights.

Nope.

Three big guys.

Oooops…. Guess it was four. / Photo by ©Frances Newhouse

 Well, Raf and I were cowering in the kitchen, imagining / awaiting the last chord the piano was gonna make as it got dropped down the staircase. Or would it be a sequence of chords? Schoenberg? Cage? A descending passage, certainly.

And where was Franny?

Right there on the staircase, filming it all!

Well, she was fascinated. Told them at one point to stop, slithered past them, and filmed it from below. Incredible—three guys moving that piano!

Two hours later, Ilia and Quique arrived. Bringing mail. Ito was off getting food—and lots of wine.

Well, time for the parents to meet!

And Ilia, bless her, has marvelous social skills. She talked, she laughed, she complimented, she charmed!

We invited her up for coffee.

This was profusely but graciously refused. Ilia is a martyr to arthritis—quite true—and she went into a paean—or perhaps a threnody, maybe a lyric ode—of description as to the suffering and limitations she faced. We repeated the invitation, she refused. She could never get up the steps. Ilia warbled on, a wren trilling, when Franny injected…

“…well, we do know three good piano movers….”

This fortunately went sailing over Ilia’s head.

Not mine, though! I had learned—you gotta be on your toes around that lady.

So I was a bit mournful this morning, as I set off on my morning walk. She’s gone and all we’ll ever have are these stories! No new material! The writer’s worst fear!

I put the B Minor Mass blaring into my ears and did my morning trot. Then came home, sat down to write, checked my emails. And my editor, toiling through the night, had designed a new cover! The old one, though glorious, would not work well as a thumbnail. 12:36 in the morning, my tireless editor, burning that midnight oil, had sent that email. Past midnight, and I am snoring away, but sleeps she? 

Never! Late, late, into the night has she labored, struggling to give birth to a cover worthy of the words I had spilled out those months ago!

Cover photos and design by ©Taí Fernández

 It was a situation that required all the tact of doña Ilia. I raved about the images, about the font of the title, the perspicacious look on the visage of the iguana. Then I asked…

…are you entirely sure about the spelling of the author’s name?

Never gonna live it down, doña Taí!

Note the wine glass on the piano! / Photo by ©Frances Newhouse