With the evening newspaper spread out across the table, Amy cradled a cup of comfort. Warming and aromatic, her coffee was her favorite companion.  At the end of a long day - the children asleep, the supper dishes washed up - there was time to put aside formulating the plans for morning; time to take a few moments of quiet and scan the newspaper. Most evenings Amy had only enough of an attention span left over to chuckle at the "wrong" advice column, but something suddenly took her attention captive.

"Miss Hammond!"

The named exploded out of Amy's mouth. She hadn't thought or said that name in years. But in that moment that it appeared in front of her, it leaped off the page into her memory, bringing it to life.  Miss Hammond - hadn't she been dead for years?  Miss Hammond, frail of frame but determined and imposing in her way, cultured, refined and not at all the sort of person Amy would ever have expected to meet.  The sort of person Amy might never have met if it weren't for those fateful words, the sudden and unthinking exclamation of a seventh grader in a troublesome situation and looking for a way out.     

I always wanted to play the piano", Amy had blurted in that desperate moment.

It was just something to say, something to give the guidance counselor something to concentrate on.  It was another one of those sessions, the ones where her guidance counselor tried to live up to her job requirements and guide her.  These discussions always went the same way, Mrs. Garcia was no different than any of the others.  

"You're a good student, and gifted.  Your grades don't reflect your abilities and this is Junior High School now, Amy.  This is where your academic career begins to be important to your future. If you don't come to school you miss opportunities to learn and your grades suffer."

Academic career.  Why had they never understood that words like that meant nothing to a twelve year old girl?  Why was it so difficult for them to see why she didn't like school?  Was she as invisible to the adults and faculty as she was to everyone else?  Mrs. Garcia droned on and on. Why did she always pick on Amy to practice her counseling skills on? Amy was in no danger of failing and there were plenty of other students who were.  Amy even knew who they were.  She was in all the same classes as they were.  Amy didn't understand then, she didn't realize that the more school she skipped and the more her grades slipped, the more likely it was that she was going to end up in classes that became increasingly less challenging. The overall effect was to make school a less attractive choice than it was already.  She had a passing grade in all her classes, why wasn't that enough for people like guidance counselors?

Mrs. Garcia was searching for something to interest Amy, not in school but in life.  When she asked for the hundredth time what Amy would like to do or study that would interest her, Amy said the first thing that came into her head.

That was how she ended up taking piano lessons from Miss Hammond.

It was decided - after the guidance counselor had contacted her mother - that not only Amy, but her brother as well, should be quickly enrolled in the study of music.  Amy's mother was very pleased with the idea;  her sister played the piano and so she was very sure both her children had latent musical talent.  She quickly located and installed in their tiny livingroom the most inconveniently large upright piano she could find at the Salvation Army store and called for the tuner.

Saturday was the appointed day for lessons and each Saturday morning, instead of running outside wild and free, Amy and her brother Nick trudged to Miss Hammond's to be instructed in the fine art of tickling the ivory.  Miss Hammond lived on Randall Hill, where all the large and imposing houses built by the richest and most important citizens of town were located.  The hill was steep, and Amy felt this weekly struggle with gravity was just her punishment for having opened her big mouth.

Miss Hammond's struggles had to do more with the students she had taken on.  She certainly earned her seven dollars when it came to Amy and her brother.  Nick could read music, but he couldn't sight-read.  Nick would learn the piece and then play it by heart every time.  He had a wonderful touch, but couldn't play anything cold.  Amy, on the other hand, could sight-read but wouldn't practice.  Miss Hammond constantly scolded her for the way she positioned her hands, Amy having a tendency to use whatever fingers were handy to strike the notes that danced across the page rather than following the accepted patterns.  Perhaps if Miss Hammond could have combined the two children into one, she would have had a prodigy.  Unfortunately all she got were two very musical but very lazy and stubborn students, whose careers were destined to be in something much less disciplined than the playing of Beethoven.

Amy probably never would have admitted it then, but she really didn't hate going to piano lessons.  She loved music and it was interesting to learn how it was made. The best part of the morning was when it was her brother's turn for a lesson.  While Miss Hammond scolded him for not reading the music, Amy was free to explore the world Miss Hammond lived in.

Miss Hammond's parlor was spacious and airy.  The baby grand piano was set by a bay window adorned only by sheer panels and that part of the room always seemed awash in sunlight that made the polished mahogany of the instrument gleam. The floors were polished as well, dust-free and shiny hardwood.  There were two rugs, persian, in rich tones of blue and red, but not matching.  One was placed under the piano and the other in the part of the room meant for sitting and socializing.  The spare look of the piano's space was sharp contrast to the other half of the room.  Deep cherry wood tables with intricately carved legs and feet were topped with embroided scarves and  books of every kind, picture books, history books. Some had been written by friends of Miss Hammond and inscribed by the author on the inside cover.  It was a glimpse right into the soul of Miss Hammond to inventory this room, her love of art and music and fine things was everywhere displayed.

Amy never knew what Miss Hammond seemed to like about her, or Nick for that matter.  It never occurred to her at that time that perhaps most of Miss Hammond's students were even less talented or diligent about practice than they were.  She now wondered if Miss Hammond felt there was something alive in them that she wanted to cultivate, something she didn't see in her other students.  Amy never knew why Miss Hammond chose her and Nick to accompany her for an afternoon of chamber music and a display of vocal talent of the operatic sort given by a tall, blonde, curly-haired man in an impressive suit. Whatever the reason, Amy had felt very grown-up and yet somehow out of place in that auditorium. Amy thought then of all the worlds that Miss Hammond had introduced to her, all the experiences she would never have had if she hadn't been trying to escape an eager and concerned guidance counselor that day so long ago.

The last time Amy had heard Miss Hammond mentioned was at least a decade ago.  Miss Hammond was gravely ill and in the hospital, with the sort of illness one does not survive.
Over the years, Amy had relegated Miss Hammond to deepest memory; the place where people long gone are sent to reside, in brain cells that are rarely called up to deliver their bits and flashes of those lives that have briefly intermingled with our own. Until that that evening, as Amy sipped her coffee and skimmed the paper.
    
        "Virgina E. Hammond, age 97,
        from complications of pneumonia,
         in a local nursing facility"

In that moment, in those few words: "survived by" "leaves" and " taught piano in her home",  Miss Hammond came brilliantly to life; resurrected from memory to scold and instruct, tapping a hand on the piano and counting out the beat as Amy struggled through Fur Elise one more time.  

And then, Miss Hammond was dead.  Again.