Between them I am perched atop a pillow on the upright's bench. I didn't know I knew. If I had learned the pieces that now sit on my bookshelf while my father could still hear them. I see us in some imaginary present, a present that could only have proceeded from a different past. There has been more discipline, more attention to what I love.
Nerves still vibrate in sympathy with sound.
In this other, parallel present, Dad and I sit before the household god of my childhood, its heavy lid raised and baring the taut strings, the animating soul of its ebony body. The music before us, a duet, is worn from use, the pages soft, the penciled fingering faded. We stop playing now and then to talk about the nuance of a passage. His hands travel the keys with the kinetic wisdom of many hours. My fingers, long like my father's, move beside his.