Mrs. Alexander’s hands and forearms were tangled in a net of veins like the mould on blue cheese.  She rested them almost imperceptibly on my shoulder as I played my scales. 

            “Tempo, tempo, tempo,” she reminded me.  “It must always stay the same.”  Her dog – a stunted Shih Tzu – licked my bare ankles, its moustache as stringy and spongy as the wet husks of corncobs.  Mrs. Alexander played the rustic Steinway as if she was shooting Gamma rays from her eyes and her fingers.  And all the while, dead husbands and building repairs plagued my existence while her house threatened to collapse on us.

            Mrs. Alexander had been my piano teacher since I could remember.  She was a short old Viennese ex-concert pianist – with her hunch she barely reached my armpits – although I did have to duck under the Tiffany hanging lampshade whenever I came in.   People always said I should try out for the freshman basketball team but I was a lot more awkward than I was tall.  I wished I had it in me.  My dad played basketball.

            My mom and I saw Mrs. Alexander at church every Sunday and then I walked her home so she could drill Stravinsky into me.  Mrs. Alexander always closed her eyes for the hymns and held the Bible in her claw-like hands, but she never needed to open it.  She sat in the last pew where she could watch the anxious organist with frightening scrutiny and my mom always sat beside her.  I guess she felt sorry for the old thing – understood the pain of losing a husband.  I’m reminded often of this because I get the feeling I’ve never met all of either woman.  But then again, Mrs. Alexander is like a well – she’s old, crumbly, and mysterious, but I sure wouldn’t want to go looking down there. 

Her house had the same sort of atmosphere.  It was dank, dark, and depressing.  Vinegar-smelling books were stacked like ruined Roman columns beside stuck-up antique chairs with snobbishly curved backs.  I indulged those schoolboy horror stories about her Colonel ghost of a husband to the point of giving myself goosebumps – I was sure that house hadn’t changed since her husband had died.  The mould I imagined tunnelling behind the peeling wallpaper threatened to buckle the entire structure.

            My mom would have none of that around our house.  She always had me outside with a stepladder and paintbrush or inside with a toolbox and flashlight.  It wasn’t just tinkering either.  Mom always had something new for me to repair – replace the cabinets, put up new wallpaper, sweep the roof, scrub the carport.  It became something more than just chores; whenever I needed to get past something – when school was beating me down or when I couldn’t quite grasp some little worldly thing – I’d come back home and find something to fix.  It wasn’t that my mom was a task-master; s’just that things were always ready for change.  I’d think of that photo of my dad hanging in our living room, tanned, strong, and smiling, and I wouldn’t complain.

            Mrs. Alexander had no eyebrows, hair, or lips.  Two copper curves spanned over her eyes – gooey and shiny like something wet hidden in Kleenex – her skin was crumpled and blanched.  She wore a charcoal wig and had drawn full lips where there were none.  As she drank her tea with shaking hands, her rose-dust lipstick melted, bleeding up the cracks and wrinkles under her nose, and fading into her mouth.  It looked like she had devoured something bloody.  I could never understand how her hands could shake to the point of creating a tempest in her teacup but when she sat at that piano it was as if a calm came over her.  Each key commanded her fingers to be steady.  She might have retained the composure of a performer, but she couldn’t help reflect the degradation of her house.  Although brilliantly talented, her mind seemed to be slowly fading.  Fading like her wallpaper.  One afternoon I had been playing Rachmaninoff.  I had gotten so immersed in it I hadn’t even realised Mrs. Alexander had dozed off.  I looked cautiously but steadily at her face. 

            “Mrs. Alexander?”  She didn’t even open her eyes; she just took a breath as if coming back to life – a deep, quick intake through the nose.  Her eyelids fluttered slightly and then she opened them.  The pearly spheres beneath her grey lashes were almost frightening.  The sharp radial patterns on her irises were out of focus and the sparkle had melted into the corners of her eyes.  She cleared her throat, swallowed back the ever-constant phlegm, and blinked herself fully into the present.

            “Yes, Thomas?” she replied roughly.

            “Erm … how was that?” I asked.  She nodded as she always did.

            “Play it again,” she said.  “And this time, play it how Mozart is supposed to be played.”

            Mom was always telling me I needed to go in and fix up Mrs. Alexander’s house for her. 

            “It’ll fall down!” she’d exclaim pleadingly.  And then one afternoon she found a way to enlist me.  One afternoon while my mom and I were painting the slats of the veranda, I saw Mrs. Alexander’s Shih Tzu poking around like a pig searching for truffles.  I was somewhat surprised to see her anywhere other than under the Steinway.  It was hard to even imagine Mrs. Alexander anywhere except in her house and that dusty old church!  Surprising me even more, it turned out Mrs. Alexander was tottering not too far behind.  My mother gave Mrs. Alexander a wave with her paintbrush. 

            “Hello, Ilse!” she called sweetly.  “We were just going to take a break.  Would you like to come inside for tea?”  Mrs. Alexander, stooped and aged, but endowed with the most sensual European accent replied that she was on her way to the church.

            “I’m helping the organist with the Easter service,” she remarked grandly.  My mom put down her paintbrush and clapped me gently on the back.

            “You should really let Thomas fix that fence of yours.  He’d have it shiny and white just in time for Spring.”  Mrs. Alexander frowned.

            “I don’t need anyone hammering about outside,” she retorted.  She turned around and continued down the sidewalk, Daisy trailing behind her now. 

            “That stubborn old woman,” muttered my mom.  “Not even willing to change the pattern of a doyley!”

            After that conversation, she was on my case more and more.

            “You can’t let her live like that, Thomas!” she’d claim after picking me up.  “She’ll inhale toxic spores or something!”  I felt sorry for Mrs. Alexander all alone in that old house creaking as if she was a part of it – an old support beam warping and groaning with time.  Her husband’s death had stitched part of her into the wallpaper of that house.  At home I always felt it was my duty to help my mom.  I was the only man in her life.  All I wanted was to live up to my father’s image, but I knew I could never be quite the same man; I just wasn’t as strong. 

            A lot of things my dad did I couldn’t do but my dad had kept the house in order while he was alive and now it was up to me.  I knew I could manage that.  My mom embraced change and so did I, but I felt my father’s ghost weave through it all.  We changed because we needed to get on with life.  We changed because it wasn’t comfortable to stand still.  A camera needs a tripod; it can’t stand on just two legs.  But Mrs. Alexander was different.  She’d lived years and years with a husband off at war and it was her duty to keep everything the same.  If Colonel Alexander had come back to a new porch, he’d feel shunted aside.  It was Mrs. Alexander’s job to brace herself against change.  And I respected her.

            I told my mom I’d offer again to get her off my back, but I didn’t offer.  The next Sunday was Easter Sunday but despite the holiday, Mrs. Alexander planned to live by her routine.  Having shuffled to the end of the pew, I put my sheet music under the cushion and sat down. 

            This year’s minister was relatively new.  She’d been preaching in our town since January, but no one had seen how she handled the holidays.  Was she traditional?  Did she deliver faithful renditions of the conventional Bible stories?  What did she instruct the choir to sing?  I didn’t much care one way or the other, but I knew Mrs. Alexander did.  The minister began:

            “Perhaps this year, more than any other year, it’s time to deviate a little from history.  It’s time to really consider what Jesus’ death means for us today?  It’s time to see the connection between his resurrection and our lives as a metaphor.”  I knew right away this wasn’t what Mrs. Alexander was expecting.  She wanted it straight out of Ephesians, Chapter 2.  The minister went on:

            “Sometimes we have to choose rebirth for we cannot continue as we are.  When life grows old – when things come to a standstill – we can choose to face them bitterly for eternity or we can turn down another path.  Rebirth is change.  This planet needs a rebirth.  Humanity needs rebirth.  We can let ourselves be born again with fresh views, bright morals, new hope.”  By the end of the sermon Mrs. Alexander was frowning fiercely, fingers still book-marking the passages she had expected to turn to.  I looked at my mom, sitting beside me.  She was staring at the cross surrounded by daffodils with tears in her eyes.  The service bothered me.  What was a son more than a rebirth of his father?  And I failed to live up to that.  All I could do was keep the damn house in order.  Clean and build and repair with strength and determination.

            Mrs. Alexander made it perfectly clear as we headed back to her house that the service had not been what she had expected.  Her beloved tradition had been blatantly shoved to the side. 

            “They didn’t even recite the resurrection!” she cried as if it were blasphemous.  She complained all the way home.  I noticed her fence winding along the sidewalk – it was rotting and a few slats were missing – it should have been replaced years ago. 

            “Mrs. Alexander?” I ventured.  “You sure you wouldn’t let me build you a new fence?”  I scraped a plank with my finger and a curl of paint flaked off.  Mrs. Alexander half huffed half grunted.

            “My husband built that,” she said with stalwart gravity.  “It’s strong enough to last.”  I doubted that very much.  My dad had built practically everything about our home yet things got old and then they got changed.  I backed off but I was frustrated.

            Inside, with her tea beside her and poor me at the piano to whip into action, she calmed down a little.  But she was still in a bad mood. 

            “Taking liberty with the caesura are we?” she nearly barked when I drifted into thought.  I brought my hands to the keys as if I’d been smacked.  I’m sure Mrs. Alexander could tell I was distracted because my fingers tripped over themselves.  She finished her tea painfully slowly while I worked my way through my exercises.  We had finished late and something was irritating me. 

            I stalked out and slammed the door and my papers fluttered, and swooped to the ground.  Cursing, I dropped to my knees to pick them up.  Without warning and with one explosive creak, the balcony floorboards beneath me shuddered.  I jumped back up and put my hands against the wall, feeling it splinter into my palms.  The window frames were groaning beside me.  My paper quivered on the flooring.  The house was going to collapse!  I hollered for Mrs. Alexander and wrenched the door back.  It stuck part ways open as if the floor had bent upwards but I pushed through the gap. 

            “Mrs. Alexander!” I shouted.  The hallway was darker – I could see the outline of the Steinway but Mrs. Alexander had left the room.  “Your house is falling apart!” I yelled, but she wasn’t there to answer.  “Mrs. Alexander!”  The ceiling whined and moaned.  “You need to get out of here!” 

            The house creaked again as if it was splitting in two and I ran for the door, shoving through the break.  I stumbled off the balcony and fell to the ground.  Looking back and trying to push myself up and away I watched the house sway ever-so-slightly but even with that slightest movement I could feel every board and beam ripple with stress.  The walls seemed to stretch and tear and the roof gave way, bending like a greeting card.  And then the entire thing went; the walls bowed and the balcony supports fractured.  With a final explosive creak the entire structure tumbled – plummeted down – into a tangle of wood and brick and mangled metal.  Like the moment after a typesetter has angrily crumpled a piece of paper just before pounding out another try, the tangled house remains stood in swollen silence.

            “Mrs. Alexander?” I called, voice shaking.  A loose board hung from a strip of metal, knocking against a doorframe. 

            Knock, knock, knock.  It must always stay the same.