Three

A slight man, tall, bespectacled, his lips drawn tight as the harmonies he sketches nightly, stooped over the falling-apart piano in his Aunt Ruth's parlor room, a stranger among the velvet drapes and crystal figurines. When she fades to sleep on the rumpled loveseat, he will rummage through the guest room closet, search out the summer dress his mother borrowed on a visit decades back, lace his taut arms through the shoulder straps, and waltz solo through the creaking hallway, far away from home. In two hours, Ruth will wake predictably, and he, now in a threadbare robe, will lead her to bed, with hands gripping her arms' loose flesh, his sharp nose bent into her head of drowsy curls.