XPLR | Colby Brock

~114~

"Hey... Rose. I know you're mad at me, you're pissed, and I know it. You should be. Rose, wherever you are, come home. I can explain everything. Please... I love you." Voicemail, Colby, December 8, 2018, 10:34pm.

I leaned back in my bed, staring at my ceiling as I ghosted the piano keys, letting the music flow through me. Just then, I heard a voice from outside the door. "Rose?" I heard a young boy ask. It's Rudy.

"Hey?" I asked as I stood up, walking towards the door. I opened it, and the little boy stared up at me for a moment. "Can you teach me how to play piano?" he asked. I chuckled at that, crossing my arms as I looked down at him. "Come sit down," I said softly as I nodded to the piano in the corner of the room. He smiled excitedly and ran past me to the piano bench.

"It's not that easy," I said. He looked up at me and smirked, his little grown up personality showing again. "I never said it would be, I couldn't think of a better teacher, though."

I rolled my eyes sarcastically. Such a little gentlemen. He'll be a lady killer one day, those little dimples are bound to rope in a few girls. And Jenny taught him so well that he'll probably love one and only one.

"Well, let's get started."

"Have you ever taught anyone to play piano?"

"Kind of," I shrugged as he made room for me on the piano bench. "So. There's this thing called the musical alphabet. It's like the real alphabet, except it's only a through g."

He nodded. "It all repeats," I told him, starting at the very bottom of the keyboard. "This one's 'A'," I explained. "How do you know which one's which?" he asked. I pointed to the black keys above the white ones. "By where they are in perspective to these," I told him. "If it's next to this one," I said, pointing to d flat, "then the one on the left is 'c', and the one on the right is "d"."

I went through the details of the names, then I started to explain the rhythm and division fundamentals of music. I've been playing music so long, I forgot how difficult it is to learn. We must've worked for a while, because around 9:30pm, we heard a knocking on the open door frame.

"Rudy, did you finish your homework?" she asked. He already knew what she was going to tell him, so he stood up and walked towards the door. I watched from the piano bench. "Of course, Ma," he said. She smiled and petted his hair. "Good boy. It's getting late, you have class in the morning. Go brush your teeth," she said. I stood up and watched him go.

"Thank you," she said quietly to me as he disappeared into the bathroom. "I'm sorry I kept him up so late," I said as I put my hands in my hoodie pockets. She shook her head. "No, he loves it. He told me last night that he wanted to see if you could teach him. Until I could afford enough to actually get him lessons..."

I thought for a moment. "I may know a girl who wouldn't mind teaching him," I said.

"Things have been tough, you know," she said, closing my old bedroom door behind her so we could speak. "Without his dad here."

I raised my eyebrows, silently asking her to go on. "He left us," she said, "Rudy was an accident, of course. Don't tell him that, of course. I was twenty-one. His father, Daniel, was twenty-two. I was old enough, mature enough, and I had enough time to finish my degree, and he was already graduated... but he still wanted to party. Now I have so many maxed out credit cards in my name, and I'm so far in debt for money I didn't even apply for..."

I gave her a look of pity, and I opened my arms to hug her. She took my invitation thankfully. "Things have been so hard. Sometimes I find myself wishing he would come back, just to be a good father to Rudy. He pretends it doesn't bother him, but it does. The kid is strong. And he looks just like his father," she complained into my ear. I rubbed her back.

"My dad hit me," I admitted, "my mom was the one who disappeared. She disappeared when I was fourteen, though."

"What happened?" Jenny asked. And, seeing how she just told me her family problems, I saw it fit to tell her my own. "Well, my parents had me when they were about seventeen, and I completely ruined both of their lives. That's what my dad would've told you, but my mother absolutely adored me, as I did her. She taught me to play piano. Well, we moved in and out with my father a lot as he tried to get sober, in truth, it took him getting diagnosed with liver cancer for him to finally give up alcohol completely. I was already gone at college then. Well, when I was fourteen, I had my first high school performance with the top orchestra, and I begged my mom to come, but my dad said no for some reason I can't really remember. When I came home, my dad was passed out and my mom was hanging from the ceiling fan in the master bedroom."

Jenny visibly flinched, and that made me regret telling her the uncensored truth. "I'm so sorry, Rose..."

"My father is dead too. But he left me a letter. He apologized for everything."

That gave me an idea. He mentioned an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in his letter, something like that... maybe they know a bit about my sober father!

I sat back down on the bed next to Jenny. We shared a few goodnights before she went to go tuck Rudy in. I laid back in my bed.

Parents shouldn't be strangers to their children, and only one of mine weren't. Sometimes I wonder what she would think of me today.

I'm going to Juilliard.

She would be so proud.

Maybe my father would be too.

I guess that's tomorrow's agenda: find out who my father really was, sober.