The Poorly Made and Other Things

HECTOR BRIM

When she'd been gone for seven days, Gil took an ax to her piano. There'd been a small reception in his apartment after the funeral. Just Natalie's parents, his mother, a handful of friends, and a few neighbors, including Mrs. Preston down the hall. Gil did nothing the entire time but wish them all gone. They had no comfort to give. No reassurances of higher meaning or better places, which they did not believe in. It wasn't the kind of crowd they were, so it wasn't the kind of crowd Gil needed. Mrs. Preston was maybe the only exception. She'd once spoken to him in the elevator, convincingly and unsolicited, about reincarnated pets and the spirit realm. But Gil squirmed in her company. Even her words of sympathy and reassurances felt small and cold. She seemed to sense this, leaving the reception early, patting his arm, and telling him, "Knock on my door if anything comes up." There was something ominous about that. It made Gil squirm even more.

He finally managed to usher out everybody else, and as the door closed on Nat's parents, he heard her mother say, "Don't you think we should stay a bit longer?"

"No," her father said, gentle. "Honey, come on. He wants to be left alone."

The door shut on that. Alone vibrated throughout the apartment. For a long time, Gil didn't move. Just stood there, still black-suited and formal, leaning against the door, needing to break something.

He turned. Gazed around at what had been their home. The tall ceilings, exposed brick. Paint they'd picked out together. Shelves filled with their books and photographs. And in the corner, those bone-and-black keys she'd hunched over with her long fingers, smiling as she played him the songs she wrote privately on lunch breaks.

"You could be a famous singer," he'd told her once.

"But then I wouldn't sing for you."

The ax was buried in the hallway closet. Why he'd brought it with him when they'd moved down to the city, he couldn't say. Maybe a part of him knew.

He loosened his tie. Rolled up his sleeves. Tore the closet door open. He knelt, began tossing old jackets over his shoulder. A tennis racket. Cobwebbed shoes. He dug the ax out of the dust. Hefted it back into the living room. And began hacking that piano to bits.

A long sliver of wood sliced at his cheek as pieces flew through the air. He felt the sting, but his entire stupid life stung now anyway, so what did it matter. He started with the keys, then moved sideways to the body. The jangling, springy chorus of snapping wires beat against his ears. He grinned, reveling in it. In the breakage of everything this once solid, formidable, smiling, perfect thing had been.

The ax crashed again and again.

A wire whipped across his bicep and he stopped. Stood panting above the wooden ruin, debris scattered across the floor. The ax hummed, frozen above his head. He felt himself pulse. Felt the leak down his arm, on his cheek.

The way the truck had hit her as she stepped unknowing off the curb, her arm had nearly cracked in half. Right along the bicep, right there. Feeling the wire now across that same spot, on his own arm, he was right back there, ax forgotten. Holding her as she went. Watching her arm twitch. Watching those long fingers go limp. The truck driver standing in the street, rocking back and forth on his heels. Retching. Weeping. Gil never heard his apologies. He just watched the arm twitch . . .

A sound. Soft, far-off. A kind of skittering slowly filled the apartment. Gil let the ax drop and clatter down out of his hand. He listened. Hundreds of insects, or tiny paws, scratching at the floor. Scrabbling across the wooden boards. A hollow, frantic scramble.

Gil frowned. Cocked his head. The noise grew louder. Louder. Began to roar throughout the room. But he couldn't tell what it was.

Someone was standing behind him.

He turned. He was alone. Alone. Of course he was. She was gone. But for a second, he'd felt someone. Felt a pocket of displaced air or . . . something. He couldn't explain it. He just felt watched.

The roar drowned this feeling out. His pulse, the leaks across his skin, quickened. He realized the noise was now joined by the coppery snaking whir of springs bouncing against each other. Gil turned again, looking around the room, starting to itch and sweat. What the hell was it? It sounded half-wooden, half . . . ivory. Sliding across the . . .

"Oh."

He looked down.

The debris of the piano was moving.

As he watched, it rolled itself across the floor and, slow but steady, wove itself into a wide, crooked heart.

Gil blinked at it. Then threw up.

*   *   *

Because Gil belonged to a group of skeptical, scoffing Manhattanite friends, he didn't really know what to do with . . . this. He didn't have the tools or the language to process the supernatural. And he knew that was probably why his wife had waited an entire week to show herself like this. Nat knew-she must have known-that she'd have to wait for a break. A moment when he'd actually believe what he was seeing. Some kind of rock bottom. Well, watching him hack at her piano with an ax was probably the best chance she'd get. Like Gil, she'd been a skeptic, so he knew she'd think like that. She'd think, How can I really convince him? That is . . . if. If she really were . . . haunting him.

If.

Gil sat on the couch, knees tucked tight under his chin. He stared at the floor, at the wet spot from the puke he'd mopped up, right in the center of the piano heart. He'd carefully left the heart untouched.

He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. Shook his head. Laughed. Tried to pull himself together. Laughed again. Gave up. He figured whatever was happening, he might as well go all in. And if he was starting to go crazy, then fuck it, what the hell.

He cleared his throat. Looked around the room, feeling self-conscious. "Alright," he said. "Are . . ." He cleared his throat again. "Are you . . . here?"

There was a green and yellow light fixture in the hall. Something Natalie had brought down to the city, and loved.

It flickered on.

Gil began to cry.

A low rushing breathed down the hall. Gil held his breath. Sliding along the floor, around the corner, came a box of Kleenex. It slid to a halt just before the couch.

"Oh," he said.

*   *   *

By sunset, he'd cried everything out. He sat calm on the couch, knees still tight against himself. Sore now, after sitting folded like that for hours. Clutching a wad of sodden tissues, he peered down the hall to the light fixture. Not sure what else to do, he said, just sort of confirming, "You're really here."

The light blinked.

Heat flooded his chest. "I . . . I miss you."

The light flickered.

Gil sat up. He stretched his legs and his knees cracked. He wrung his hands, thinking.

"Are you . . . mad that I broke your piano?"

The light blinked twice.

Gil nodded. "Okay." He sniffed, ran a hand under his nose. "Okay."

He quickly figured out that he could ask Nat simple yes or no questions through the light. She'd blink once for yes, twice for no. As long as he kept the questions simple, she would answer.

Over the next three weeks, every chance he got, he'd speak with her. And, of course, told no one about it. Sometimes, she would float old pictures around to make him smile, or throw her jewelry across the room. Once, he'd felt a hand on his back. It made him jump and scream. But the hand wrapped around his shoulder, warm and safe. He melted into its company.

He sat under the hall light for hours every day. Talking, reminiscing, sometimes just staring. Silent. Trying not to ache.

Finally, he worked up the strength to ask the most terrifying question he could think of.

"Are you in pain?" Gil sat slumped against the wall. He stared up at the light. Waited for it to respond.

It didn't.

"Hey. Are you in pain?"

The light flickered.

She wasn't sure. She might be in pain. He could tell. Could feel it through the walls. Some kind of gnawing uncertainty. A looseness or unbalance. Something . . . off with her.

It was after another week of this-of talking and crying and clinging to her, of barely leaving his apartment just to be near her, even if it was just a flicker of who she was-that Gil finally decided she probably needed help.

Something echoed through his brain: Knock on my door if anything comes up . . .

Well. Something had definitely come up.

*   *   *

Even if she hadn't offered, Gil probably would have trusted Mrs. Preston more than any of his skeptic pals. Especially now that he'd isolated himself for weeks, barely answering their texts and calls. He and Mrs. Preston weren't friends. Not by any stretch of anything. They said hello to each other when they crossed paths in the lobby. In the elevator sometimes, they chatted politely about the weather, city life, reincarnated pets that one time, spirits rarely, and . . . well, they had chatted about Nat. Or with her, even, when she'd been there.

That hurt to think about.

Mrs. Preston was about eighty, a good fifty...