Piano Lessons

We'd lived in the big white house with the seventeen oak trees for a couple of months, when the folks got it into their heads I needed piano lessons. I was driven, walked or rode my bike the mile or so to Mrs. King's small green house every Wednesday afternoon from 3:30 to 4:30.
She sat to my right in her stuffy, tiny basement and gently encouraged my scales and my dreadful renditions of "Little River Flowing". How exactly my parents had chosen this pleasant but painfully ugly old lady to guide my alleged genius, I never did ascertain. It was a mercifully brief episode though, as only a few months passed before I was informed, with many a sideways glance, that I would not be required to pedal over to Mrs. Kings house this Wednesday. I considered it a stroke of luck and proceeded to practice jumping my bike in a life-threatening way at the freshly excavated dirt lot down the street.
The next morning on my walk to school, I developed an inexplicable curiosity about the Lutheran church kiddie-corner from our house. Their windows were plain, narrow panels that ran from the ground to the roof of the square, gray building. So unlike the ornate Episcopalian stained glass masterpieces that were proper church windows. Perhaps a glance down the hallway would explain why these filthy Norwegians didn't know how to worship God correctly. I cut across the lawn and cupped my hands against the early morning glare on the pane.
Laid out there not a foot from my peering eyes, like she just had nothing better to do for the day, was something that looked a lot like Mrs. King, in what my brain could only insist was some kind of ...big... crib.
Blue as a raspberry Otter Pop and parked casually in this corner against the improper window while awaiting... I just didn't even know what.
Looking longer, I strongly suspected she didn't know "what" either.
She was a plank. A brick. She had clearly bought the farm, was pushing up daisies, had not a care in this world.
Having watched my cat Popcorn eat exactly half of my hamster Moby, I had a firmer grasp on the concept of death than my folks ever would have suspected. The possibility that this corpse was my piano teacher filled me with a certain... um... glee.
When next Tuesday afternoon rolled around, I asked coyly, with many a sideways glance, if I could ride my bike to piano lessons tomorrow. My Mom took a deep breath, told me to have a seat, then slowly explained that Mrs. King... had gone... to be with Jesus now.
I managed to squeeze out a tear or two for appearance's sake, but felt my performance was perhaps lacking the element of surprise.
Trying to observe an appropriate period of mourning as some sort of penance for my absence of real remorse, I waited a whole twenty minutes before asking if I could take my bike to the vacant lot.