Page Content (OCR)
31 acquaintances from the bubbles? No. What did they have to do with my gorgeous satin dress? For a second I felt just the tiniest bit happy that we’d moved, then guilty that ’'d thought such a thing. I shouldn’t be happy about never seeing them again, but I was. I knew they wouldn’t come here because I had never told them that we were moving. Again something nagged at my memory but the pull of the room with the piano was too strong so I emptied my thoughts of everything but this moment. I just knew if I sat down at the instrument in that glittering emerald dress I could play music that would fill the room. I lifted my silken skirt and stepped toward the concert grand. When I sat down I traced the golden word on the gleaming black wood with my finger. Steinway. Mother had read that for me the day before. She’d explained that my grandmother once sang with the opera at the Met, and that this very piano had been on the stage at the Met also. The Met is the short word for a famous place called the Metropolitan Opera House. Mother explained that my Grandfather had arranged to have the piano moved to the house in St. Louis so it would be there when he first brought Grandmother to Missouri from New York. Grandma had loved the piano and this room, mother said. Grandma was dead but now I loved the room, too. I ran my hands over the piano keys, then stood and walked around it to trace the glossy black curves of the huge instrument. It seemed as long and as wide as Daddy’s black car. Mother had explained that the instrument was what was called “a concert grand,” and much larger than most grand pianos because it was built to grace a large stage. I’d certainly never seen such a big piano. Somehow the palms of my hand could feel something special emanating from the piano. As if the curvy black box were vibrating. The touch against my fingers was something almost like breathing. This piano wasn’t just wood and Barbara: The Story of a UFO Investigator