"Soft thumbs," Ruth said, the first commandment. "The thumb is not a hammer. The thumb is a guest."
"Guests don't live here," Claire said, practical, thinking of the couch that was never opened.
"Exactly. A guest who intends to be invited back does not kick the door."
Paul Brennan came home from the diner at eight, smelling of the grill and the bleach they used on the floor mats. He was a tall man who had wanted, once, to play saxophone and had become, instead, a person who fed other people eggs at six in the morning and meatloaf at six at night. He loved his wife without understanding her standards, which is one of the more durable forms of love. He ate in the kitchen while lessons finished so his chewing would not become a metronome. When the last student left, he stood in the doorway and said, "Play something a person can hum," and Claire, if she was not furious at a scale, would play a hymn. He hummed badly. Ruth pretended not to smile. Claire counted this among the proofs that the house worked.
On Sundays, after church, if there was no wedding to play and no paper to grade, Ruth let the discipline loosen by a notch. Paul had bought, at a yard sale, a book of rags with the cover torn and Scott Joplin's name still proud on the first page. Claire learned "The Entertainer" too fast and too loud. Ruth made her slow it down until the syncopation became a choice instead of a spill.
"You can love more than one kind of true," Ruth said. "You cannot love them all at the same volume at the same time. That's not feeling. That's a mess."
"Dad likes it loud."
"Your father likes you. The volume is a side effect."
Claire stored these sentences the way a pianist stores fingerings, in the hand, where they would be available later without being recited. She did not know she was storing them. She thought she was only learning a piece.