One Piano

The lawyer reads the will in eleven minutes. The house to charity, the money to a foundation, the books to the university. And then, like a landmine in a garden: "The piano — to both my daughters, equally, with the request that it never be sold." Neither sister has spoken to the other in seven years. They sit on opposite ends of the lawyer's sofa like brackets around an empty sentence. The piano is a 1936 walnut upright with a cigarette scar on the lid and a middle C that sticks in humid weather. It is worth almost nothing. It is worth everything. Their mother taught on it for forty years; every student in the neighborhood passed through that bench, including, in sequence, both of them — Ipek, who became a pianist, and Zehra, who became the one who stayed, drove to appointments, cooked, watched, and listened to other people's children play her mother's piano through the kitchen wall. "It should be with someone who plays," says Ipek. "It should be with someone who was here," says Zehra. The lawyer, who has seen wars start this way, quietly slides the tissue box to the center of the table. The piano sits in an empty house across town, untuned, holding its breath.