Ms. Albrecht resided on a uniform street of one-story homes separated by patches of grey grass and brown concrete. West Texas is not partial to lushness and I do not trust places with too much green, for God could not have intended to carpet over so much of his creation.
Perhaps I have lived here too long.
Her home was spotless and pearly white painted, seemingly immune to the natural proceedings of life beyond its borders. I had thought that her name sounded German and upon meeting her, her voice all but confirmed. Her accent wasn’t so rough as it used to be, I figured, having been dulled by years of southern exposure - like the tip of a sharpened pencil sanded down.
I had written to Ms. Albrecht about lessons a week before Jackson, my nephew, went missing. I don’t know what compelled me to keep the appointment.
My sister believed her son had run away. I did not blame her for such thinking as it helped nourish her dwindling supply of hope, but it wasn’t wishful reasoning either. Even Texas had always been too small for Jackson. He dreamed of going to the moon, or deep under the ocean, or into a black hole into another dimension where he could experiment with drugs and ride his skateboard and kiss pretty girls on the beach and never need to put on another tie to go to church. But he was a poor student in the classroom and an even poorer student of the universe. He would never find true fulfillment in this life, and I must admit an ugly part of me felt relief that perhaps he’d passed on before arriving at the age to realize it.
Ms. Albrecht was not impressed when I told her that I was also a teacher, nor did she find the fact particularly relatable.
“I. Don’t. Teach. Children,” she’d said, enunciating every word.
I found this odd, since I could not imagine her little business finding profit in the absence of such an important customer base. Though I couldn’t quite blame her, either. The sweltering summer breaks between school years left me melancholy and disillusioned. But, inevitably, the first day would arrive and the children would come barging inside, backpacks bouncing, shoes squeaking, and little voices screeching, “Hi, Mrs. Amy” as they plopped down at their desks. How could I not go on, then?
Our first lesson was uneventful. Ms. Albrecht had only agreed to teach me after hearing that I had previous practice, though I hadn’t played in years. She showed me various tricks of the trade and criticized my posture until I sat up proper, like mother used to make us at the supper table. At the end of the hour, she gave me a piece to practice and made me promise that I would spend as much time as I could learning it.
When I got home, I began my nightly routine of scrolling. I scrolled through countless faces of children and teenagers who had been taken in West Texas, occasionally stopping on some picture to fully take in their face. I had this habit when watching movie credits too – homing in on one of the crew members or minor actor’s names and really committing it to memory. I wanted someone, somewhere, besides their family to acknowledge their existence and appreciate it, even if they never knew. And they wouldn’t.
I did not practice as much as Ms. Albrecht had told me to, and my poor performance reflected this reality, made worse by nervousness for having lied about my efforts at my home keyboard. She flinched every time I brushed the wrong key or held the sustain pedal a moment too long. Even the tiniest imperfection made her physically cringe. I thought of telling her about what had happened to my nephew as an excuse for my lack of focus but decided against it. I was distracted, of course, but I had realized I was taking these lessons to temporarily keep my mind off Jackson, which would not work if I wielded his disappearance to my own selfish benefit.
Ms. Albrecht encouraged me to keep practicing the Bach piece, Minuet in G major, since it would be one of two pieces I needed to learn before my recital in two months. Privately, I had already decided to skip the recital if Jackson had not been found alive by then.
Ms. Albrecht’s second student was the forty-year-old Gary Richter, a construction worker. A bear of a man, he was nearly as large as my brother-in-law, who had played division three football at Texas State University. Ms. Albrecht invited me over to watch Gary play and take to his example. It amazed me that his meaty hands could glide so effortlessly over the keys, pressing down delicately or strongly whenever the moment required it. Curiously, Ms. Albrecht appeared more impressed that he rarely made mistakes rather than focusing on the beautiful and delicate music he conjured. As a fellow teacher, this approach seemed counterproductive to me, but she was the expert.
My husband, Mark, usually came home around eight o’clock in the evening after a long day of summer two-a-day practices. He had been coach of the high school football team for seven years with three state championships to show for it, and was regarded as something of a celebrity in town. I had no love for the violent sport, though I attended every game he had ever coached, just as I had gone to every game he played when we were in school together.
I started to read articles about tests they were doing on professional football players. About how all those hits to their heads had poisoned their minds and made them violent and suicidal. How some of them had shot themselves in the chest so that scientists could study their broken brains and confirm what those poor men already knew. I tried to bring these articles to Mark’s attention, but he reassured me that his players, his boys, needed structure in their lives. The field was where he had become a man. His father had instilled that toughness in him from a young age and he was obligated to pass it on. The game paid our bills. Put a roof over our heads.
“Maybe Jackson would still be here if he had come and played for me,” he said.
I told him off for saying such a disgusting thing and he apologized.
At school, I’d seen the bright faces of these boys who had dreamed of becoming football stars. I had nightmares of their brains turning into mush - watching them all grown up and melting into a pool of blood on cartilage on the turf playing field. Mark and I couldn’t have children, but if we had a boy, I was never going to allow him to play football. The fantasy of telling Mark firmly this fact did some work to reassure me, and the nightmares mostly stopped.
It was during my fourth lesson that Ms. Albrecht tried to hit me. I am ashamed to admit at this point I knew with near certainty that Jackson was dead. I practiced even less than before, and I played so poorly that Ms. Albrecht had groaned and curled her fingers into a fist before thrusting her forearm at me. The movement was odd, less of a punch and more as if she had been gripping an imaginary belt to lash my fingers with. Since she did not make contact, she did not apologize, but her frustration was apparent.
I committed myself to practicing more, really making a go of it, and no longer wondering so much about the fate of my nephew. And during my next lesson, I hardly made any mistakes.
She still cringed every time I did.
After one particularly heavy night of scrolling, I decided to research Ms. Albrecht. After a bit of digging, I discovered that her first name was Maria and that her young son, Emil, was something of a prodigy on the piano back in Germany. Ms. Albrecht had never mentioned having a son, who would be well into his thirties now, but I did not find this strange, as she had never spoken to me about her personal life.
I played well again during our next weekly lesson, which I thought bought me one personal question. I asked her if she had a family, or any children. Her expression did not change when she said to me, “I have a son.” I did not play so well that I had earned a follow-up. Perhaps if I played perfectly the next week, I would ask, “What does he do for a living?”
The places where prodigies went always fascinated me.
Six weeks after Jackson went missing, I discovered that my brother-in-law had been hitting my sister for years, and she came to live with us.
Mark claimed he had always sensed something fishy about the man.
I didn’t know.
Jackson must have known.
Seven weeks after Jackson went missing was one week before my recital. I played both Bach pieces without fault and Ms. Albrecht gave me her first nod of genuine approval.
“You will play this way at the recital.”
“I’ll try my best.”
“No, you will not try. You will play this way at the recital.”
I didn’t ask what her son did for a living.
Jackson didn’t get found, but I changed my mind about the recital. After sunlight hours spent researching, seeking updates from the police, and going out for long drives together, my sister would lay on the couch with a cool rag on her head and listen to me hammer away on the keyboard. She wanted to come to the recital. Support me. I didn’t say no.
The recital was held at the old revival church two minutes off a dusty stretch of highway. Gary had gathered his family and friends and they sat on one side of the pew, while my sister sat alone on the other, two rows in front of the church janitor and a friendly mailman who had been delivering to Ms. Albrecht for years and had grown enraptured by the music he heard emanating for her pearly white walls.
Ms. Albrecht stood tense in the wings while Gary played his pieces, letting out a heavy sigh of relief when he finished without making a single mistake, though I knew he wouldn’t.
His family and friends stood and applauded.
But Ms. Albrecht just shifted her expectant gaze to me.
I played my first piece to perfection, despite the burn of Ms. Albrecht’s eyes boring into the side of my neck. Gary’s family was kind enough to stay and watch me too.
While playing the second piece, the weight of my husband’s absence in the audience began to press down on my shoulders. The heavy sensation wormed itself down through my body, sinking my heart and slowing my fingers.
Still, I only made one mistake.
Just one.
A miracle. Since when I accidentally brushed over C sharp, Ms. Albrecht let out an audible groan.
I finished the rest of the piece without incident.
Applause. My sister. Gary’s friends and family. The mailman. The church janitor.
But not Ms. Albrecht.
She simply walked out of the church.
And I never saw her again.
--
Mark told me that practice had gone long, and he covered my face with kisses and apologies.
He doesn’t know how close I was to leaving him.
But I stayed.
--
Ten weeks after Jackson went missing, the police found Ms. Albrecht hung by her neck from the staircase banister.
I barely had processed the shock when two days later, the news reported that two boys had been found in her dusty basement.
One was alive.
The other was recently deceased.
I recognized the dead boy. I had focused on his face once while scrolling.
Mikey Dixon.
He had been stolen from a playground a year ago.
The other boy was named Henry Mercer. He had also been taken a year ago while walking home from school.
He would not speak.
He could not speak.
His hands and his stomach were covered with lashes.
Although I was a material witness, they would not allow me to see the photos.
Because of Jackson, I had grown close to a female police officer, who reluctantly slipped me the pictures.
I vomited into a trash can.
She tried to take the photos away.
I begged her to give them back.
I looked more closely.
I have a good memory.
Especially when it comes to my mistakes.
The imperfections in my piano playing were marked on Mikey like a symphony of bloody notes on the parchment of flesh.
One lash for every missed note.
Henry’s body was not so violated.
He had been punished for Gary’s mistakes, I concluded. Which were fewer.
Gary played perfectly during the recital.
Henry was alive.
I made a single mistake.
And Mikey was dead.
I wanted to yank Ms. Albrecht’s corpse out of the morgue, resurrect her and hang her again.
Instead, I vomited a second time.
--
Twelve weeks after Jackson went missing and one week after Mikey and Henry were found, I was preparing for the school year. I had the supplies laid out on my new carpet: Paper, pencils, rulers, notebooks, and calculators. The department never had enough money for supplies, and Mark made more than enough money at his job to justify it.
The hardwood floors in the house had been pretty, but I felt carpet was comfier and covered the uncleanliness when I wasn’t in the mood to vacuum. Mark hadn’t made a fuss.
I didn’t know how I could face my kids, though I knew that I needed to go back. I needed to see their faces. I needed their shoes to squeak on the floor and tell me, “Good morning, Mrs. Amy.”
Then, there was a knock at my door.
It was the friendly mailman. The man who had come to my recital.
He told me that Ms. Albrecht had given him a letter to deliver to me on this date exactly.
I invited him inside. Asked him if he wanted coffee.
He didn’t. He asked me if I wanted privacy to read the letter.
I told him, “No.”
My husband was at work.
I wanted someone to be there.
I opened the letter.
A short message:
I was the only one who deserved to be punished. Not them. Not you.
I didn’t understand.
Until I looked at the mailman.
The big smile on his face.
Ear to ear.
Unblinking.
Waiting for my reaction with giddy anticipation.
My eyes instinctually traveled down to his hands.
The scars had faded over the years.
But they were there.
The markings.
The lashings his mother had given him.
“Play something for me,” he said calmly.
He turned his head to look at my keyboard in the den.
“You’ve improved so much from when you first started.”
I choked back a sob.
Shook my head.
“It was hard to hear you in the basement. Play for me.”
I shook my head again.
He stood up quickly.
I yelped and stumbled backward.
He just chuckled.
He went to the piano and played.
It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.
I wanted to scream. Shout. Cry. Fight.
But the fear froze me.
Or perhaps it wasn’t fear.
After, he casually pulled the fallboard back over the dusty keys. Stood. And left.
And I called the police.
But they never found him.
--
Fifteen weeks after Jackson went missing, the police found him alive at a commune near Port Aranses. My parents used to take me and my sister down there to fish in the Gulf of Mexico, and until now I had only associated the spot with pleasant memories.
Jackson had tried to cross the border and was stopped at the gate, some combination of drunken and high.
In the police report, the officers who apprehended him recorded what he was mumbling as they took him away.
“I coulda kicked his ass. I’m nearly bigger than that bastard now.”
“I coulda.”
“I coulda.”
“I shoulda.”
But he had run away.
He stayed with me and Mark and my sister until she found a place of her own.
Jackson told me of perfect summer nights at the commune where he would strip naked and wade out into the water - turn over onto his back and stare up at the star-peppered sky.
The breeze licking his face. The cicadas buzzing. A pocket of the world without people.
He tells me he still sees that dotted black ocean in the sky when he closes his eyes.
Spreads his arms out wide.
As if he were floating in space.
Like an astronaut.
He tells me he never really left.
He says he will float there forever.