The church sale where the keyboard appeared was a Saturday with folding tables and a woman at the door selling coffee in Styrofoam. Renee had gone for a rice cooker because theirs had died. Jonah had gone because the library was closed for a holiday and the apartment was too quiet. He stopped at the keyboard and put one finger down and did not look at her. She watched the finger. She knew the look from the week Dean’s route became a forwarding address. Necessity did not shout. It stayed on a key. She paid fifteen dollars and carried the rice cooker. He carried the keyboard, badly, the cord dragging. A man at the next table said kids love noise. Renee said this one might love the other thing. The man shrugged. Shrugging was going to be a theme. She did not know that yet. She knew the cord was dragging and she picked it up.
At home the keyboard did not fit the table. It fit the window ledge if you moved the plant. The plant died later of neglect and was not mourned. The keyboard stayed. Jonah played after homework and before nine. Renee learned the nine o’clock rule was for her sleep and kept it. He learned the rule was a wall that made the hour before it matter. Walls were useful. The atrium adults had tried to be a wall and had been a comment instead. Comments he could step through. Walls he could practice against.
Dean’s Christmas cards came with a twenty and a printed signature three years out of five. Jonah cashed the twenty into the shoe jar and did not write a letter he did not feel. Renee said a text was enough. He sent a text. Got it. Thanks. Dean replied a thumb. The thumb was the relationship. The keyboard Dean eventually shipped was a better thumb. Jonah allowed the better thumb to be what it was, an object, not a return. Returns were for trains.