PIANO LESSONS...

...PIT VIPERS AND X-RAY SPECS 

By Heidi Johnson-Wright

I began learning to play the piano in elementary school at the insistence of my parents. I found it a miserable chore. My sister and I would dutifully take our piano lessons each Saturday morning. I’m not sure whose bright idea it was, but our lessons commenced at 8am, and it was a 20-minute drive to get there. Sleeping in on Saturday mornings became a mere fantasy.

Our teacher was Mrs. S. She lived with her mother in an old, musty-smelling house near the lake. That her mother was still alive was inconceivable, given that Mrs. S herself was older than dirt. She was stoop shouldered and slow moving. Her face bore a distinct resemblance to the faces of the folk art dolls my mom carved from apples and set out to dry in the sun. On days when I was less charitable of spirit, I would describe her visage as, well, simian.

Mrs. S’s voice was thin and reedy and came forth from her throat like a long, silvery thread. If you went to Egypt’s Valley of the Kings and dug up the mummy of Nefertiti, opened her tomb, unwrapped her bandages and chanted an incantation that could make her speak, the voice that came forth just before her head collapsed into a cloud of dust would probably sound like Mrs. S.

Mrs. S never answered the door when we arrived at 8am each Saturday. It was always a man at the door whose identity remains unclear to me to this very day. I would beg my sister to have my lesson at 8:30 so I could make her go first while I sat on a wooden bench with a braided seat cover in the foyer, reading Mrs. S’s trove of comic books. Laura never hesitated to pull older sister rank on me, so I perpetually had the 8am slot.

Mrs. S neither liked nor trusted her students. She did not bother to climb out of her sarcophagus until she actually heard us arrive. I pictured her putting a giant, antique ear horn to her head, letting out a sigh, then getting out of bed. I had to sit on the piano bench for another 15-20 minutes waiting for her, studying precisely where the wallpaper pattern began repeating.

As if that weren’t bad enough, Mrs. S had the disposition of an irritated pit viper. She barely greeted me before shuffling over to her chair beside the piano bench. Once I began playing the pieces she’d given me to work on, the least little thing set her off: the clumsy grace note, the missed key change, piano instead of pianissimo. She was a shriveled, gnarled mummy who could utter only scoldings. Worst of all, she gave letter grades for each lesson, and appeared to savor the withholding of praise and approval. Had my parents purposefully searched far and wide to find a teacher who could turn off a child to playing the piano, they could not have made a better choice. Bravo!

I worried myself sick until the lesson was over and the grade was finally doled out. A bad grade (anything below an A-) would result in a second scolding at home. If I didn’t tell my parents how my lesson went, my sister would be sure to fill them in.

Once Mrs. S allowed me to escape from her lair, I traded places with Laura on the bench in the foyer. Now it was my turn to relax and thumb through the comic books that Mrs. S must have bought at a rummage sale years before. I didn’t read them for the comics themselves. Was there ever a Caspar the Ghost storyline that wasn’t lame? Who could possibly identify with Richie Rich and Scrooge McDuck?

No, I read them for the ads.

I was fascinated with two different types of ads. The first type was the more obvious: ads for practical joke novelties and “spy” gadgets. I never actually sent away for a pack of exploding cigarettes or chewing gum that smells like farts, but I got plenty of joy imagining who I’d torment with them. Even better, I pictured myself in a tableau of Cold War intrigue, secretly photographing my sister’s diary with a mini spy camera or staring through her boyfriend’s clothing with a pair of X-ray specs.

The other type of ad was for posters and accessories that gave me a glimpse into a world utterly despised by my parents. They considered anything that even vaguely promoted drug use or anti-establishment/hippie culture to be Satanic. I was endlessly fascinated by black light and Op Art posters and dreamed of papering my room with them. In elementary school, I wasn’t really into the Doors or Jimi Hendrix. But I was pretty sure I could send my God and country, Paul Harvey-loving dad into orbit if I sewed a patch on my jeans that said: “War is not healthy for children and other living things."

I’d been taking lessons from Mrs. S for about a year when my mom told me that Mrs. S was very ill and in the hospital. She’d apparently had a stroke. (Or a legion of carnivorous scarab beetles had finally eaten through her sarcophagus.) I wouldn’t be going to piano lessons for several weeks. Pity.

About three weeks later, my mom said that Mrs. S had been called home. I figured that either meant heaven or Luxor. Half of me felt joy, and the other half of me – the hard-working, Midwestern, Protestant half – felt guilty that I felt joy. I kept all of my feelings to myself. Nothing could set off my parents faster than even the mere perception that I was being disrespectful to an adult. (Or to the memory of one.) 

Ten-plus years later, my mom, sister and I were taking a stroll down memory lane. Mrs. S’s name came up, and I said that the nasty, old harpy should not have been allowed in the same room with children, let alone giving them piano lessons. As if on cue, my mom leapt to Mrs. S’s defense, citing her Julliard pedigree. As if being formally educated makes one a decent person.

My mom said Mrs. S shouldn’t be judged so harshly, especially given the gruesome circumstances of her death.

“Gruesome? What’s so gruesome about a stroke?” I asked.

This elicited howls of laughter from my sister.

“Oh, my God, after all these years – you never told her?” she asked my mom.

My mom shook her head.

“Heidi, you goofball,” said Laura, “Mrs. S went down to her basement, stood on a chair, stuck her head in a noose, and shot herself! She was really depressed over her mother’s death -- or maybe she just couldn’t take your playing!”  

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