I found the little brass latches on either side, under the lip of the top lid, and turned them. The panel was heavier than it had looked when Mr. Haines did it, and I nearly dropped it, and I had to lean it against my legs and walk it backwards to the couch, the way I'd seen my father and Gus walk the piano in. Then I turned around and looked at the inside of the piano, at the city of hammers and strings, and at the back of the panel I'd just taken off.
Taped to the back of the panel, right behind where the music desk would fold down, there was a large brown envelope.
It was taped with masking tape gone yellow and brittle, and when I touched one corner it came loose with a dry little crackle, like a leaf. On the front, in blue ink, in handwriting that was big and shaky and slanted hard to the right, it said:
For Carrie.
I sat down on the floor with it in my lap. Oliver came down off the radiator and walked across the room and climbed into the space between my crossed legs and the envelope, and turned around once, and lay down, and put his chin on my knee.
The flap wasn't sealed. It was only tucked in.
I want to tell you that I didn't open it. That I was a good kid who knew where the line was, that I waited and gave it to my mother. I did give it to her, in the end. But I opened it first. I was twelve and I'd been listening to that note every night for three weeks, and I opened it.
Inside were four sheets of music manuscript paper, the kind with the printed staves, soft and creased and handled. Someone had written music on them in pencil, a careful, old-fashioned hand, the notes round and dark, and in places the pencil had been erased and written over, and in places there were little words penciled above the notes, gently, softly, slow here. At the top of the first page it said Carrie's Song, and under that, in smaller letters, For my girl, 1953.
The first note on the first page, all by itself, with a little fermata over it, the curved line with a dot that Mr. Dombrowski had taught us meant hold this as long as you want, was an E-flat. Just above middle C.
The pages had been played from so often that the bottom corners were worn soft and round, almost fuzzy, like cloth.
There was also a single sheet of blue stationery, folded in thirds, with a printed border of forget-me-nots. The handwriting on it was the same as on the envelope, big and shaking. It wasn't long.