Porcelain Keys (11 page)

I sat at the piano and turned to him. “What would you like to hear?”

“What do you have memorized?”

“Chopin, Liszt, Schubert, Beethoven. Take your pick.”

He smiled. “Why don’t you play a few of your favorites, then?”

“A few?”

He nodded.

I twisted around and caught Thomas’s gaze. “Do you have time?”

“As much as you need.” He gave a little smile that filled me with a surge of confidence. Even if no one else in the
world wanted to hear me play, Thomas would. I shut out the fact that Nathaniel was sitting beside me, that he would be scrutinizing every sound my fingers produced. Instead, I laid my hands on the keys and played for Thomas.

I started with a spirited Chopin sonata, then somewhere in the middle of a lulling Schubert nocturne, I lost myself in the music. Through Mozart and Beethoven and Liszt, I thought about Thomas sitting behind me, and each note I played felt like a needle pulling string through my heart, binding it to his with an unbreakable stitch.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but finally Nathaniel put a hand on my shoulder and nodded for me to stop. I waited for him to say something, but he just sat there like a stone, a faraway look etched on his face. After a good minute, he stood and began pacing behind me. Anticipation pulled at my stomach, and I swiveled on the bench so I could see his face. He looked uncertain, and I was suddenly terrified he was going to tell me that my abilities were mediocre, that piano would be a good hobby for me but nothing more.

“Can you practice five hours a day?” he finally asked.

“I can on the days my dad is at work.”

“Your dad doesn’t know about this?” He paused and stared at me.

I shook my head. “He doesn’t know I’m here. And if you decide to teach me, he can’t know about that either.”

“Well,” he said, “I can’t say that surprises me.” He resumed pacing. “How often does he work?”

“Usually ten days a month. But I can practice more than five hours on those days.”

He shook his head. “That won’t do. Can you come here to practice on the evenings your dad is home?”

I considered this. I’d have to lie to Dad about where I was. I’d have to tell him I’d picked up more hours at work. I’d need to find a way to get here. And I’d have to find time to get my chores and homework done.

“She can practice at my house.” Thomas stood and crossed the room. “I live next door to her.”

“What kind of piano?” Nathaniel asked suspiciously.

“A Baldwin.”

“What model?”

Thomas stared at him blankly.

“Oh, never mind,” Nathaniel said, waving an impatient hand. “What kind of shape is it in?”

Thomas shrugged. “Good enough, I think.”

I gave Thomas a smile of gratitude, but his face remained as intense as Nathaniel’s. They both looked like they were debating how to perform life-saving surgery on a dying person.

“Has it been tuned recently?” Nathaniel asked.

“We’ll have it tuned.”

Nathaniel nodded, then resumed pacing behind me. “Juilliard is one of the toughest schools to get into,” he said. “You need three things to make an impression on the judges. You need good technique, and good song choices to show off that technique.” He stopped and folded his arms across his chest.

“What’s the third thing?” I asked as my heart thrummed against my chest.

“The most important of all,” he said. “Passion. If you play a dull song with mediocre technique, but play it with enough passion, they’ll know you’re teachable. You need to cut yourself open and hand over your heart. You’re not just displaying talent, you’re showcasing your soul.”

I sat there, trying to figure out what he was saying. “Do I have what it takes?” I asked nervously.

“You have excellent technique. Your mother taught you well. I can help you with song choices. And let me tell you something, Aria.” He sat and laid his hand on my shoulder. “You have artistic power in those fingers of yours, and passion I haven’t heard since . . .” A small, thoughtful smile appeared on his lips. “Since your mother.”

A medley of joy and relief swelled in my chest, pushing tears to my eyes. “Thank you,” I whispered. “You don’t know how much those words mean to me.”

“I think I know,” he said with a wink and a little smile. He patted my hand and rose. “Listen—if you can commit to practicing five hours a day, then your chances of impressing the judges are good.”

He began gathering a stack of sheet music from the shelves on the wall, and I glanced up at Thomas. He was gazing at me thoughtfully, a sparkling reverence in his eyes. Nathaniel summoned me to the sofa, where we went over some pieces he wanted me to work on. When we finished, we discussed scholarship options, and then he walked us to the door.

“Oh,” I said as I stepped onto the porch. “How much are lessons?”

He folded his arms and gazed down at the porch, his brow furrowed in contemplation. After a moment he looked up at me and said quietly, “You can pay me, Aria, by giving this your all, by making something of the gift your mom passed on to you.”

I nodded, completely humbled by his generosity. “Thank you, Nathaniel. For being such a great friend to my mom, and a friend to me now.”

He patted my shoulder and smiled. “I’ll see you next week.”

On the way back to Woodland Park, I chattered to Thomas about the meeting with Nathaniel and my hopes for the future. After ten minutes or so, I realized I was the only one talking, and the only one smiling. He drove quietly, his eyes fixed on the road and his brow lowered as though weighed down by some perplexing matter. I watched him from the corner of my eye, wondering if he regretted offering his help and now felt burdened by his obligation.

“You don’t really have to let me practice at your house every day,” I said. “And you don’t have to drive me to my lessons or anything. There are a thousand other ways to get to Colorado Springs.”

He glanced at me. “I don’t mind at all. I’m glad I can help.”

I watched him and waited for the shadow to lift from his expression, but it clung to him like pine sap. “Is everything okay?” I asked. “You seem upset about something.”

“Can I ask you something?” he said, ignoring my question. “Has anyone asked you to home-coming?”

My heart tripped into a run. Was he asking me? “No, not yet,” I said, trying to suppress the bubbling excitement in my chest.

His jaw tightened. “Well, I’m sure someone will,” he said flatly, keeping his gaze on the road.

Confused, I asked, “Have you asked anyone yet?”

“No. Someone asked me though.”

It took me a minute to find my voice again. “I thought you didn’t date.”

“I don’t. It’s just that, well . . .” He shrugged. “It’s not technically a date. I mean, it’s a school function.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. I was taken off guard, like being shoved unexpectedly off a cliff. I didn’t want to ask who had asked him because I already knew, and because a lethal amount of jealousy would surface in my voice.

“Trisha cornered me,” he volunteered, and I felt the sharp rocks at the bottom of the cliff pierce through my heart. “She said you were going with Dirk, and asked if I wanted to go with her and maybe double with you and him.”

“What? Dirk? He hasn’t asked me, and I’m sure he won’t.” I clenched my jaw, anger tensing every muscle in my body. Why would Trisha say that? Was she really low enough to lie just to get a date with Thomas?

“I’m sure he will.” His hands tightened on the steering wheel, as though this bothered him.

“What makes you so sure?”

“Locker-room talk. That’s all I’ll say.”

“Good. Don’t say any more,” I said with a cringe. I smiled, trying to appear unaffected by this awful turn of events. “So . . . you’re going with Trisha,” I said cheerfully, though the words tasted bitter on my lips. “You’ll have the prettiest date at the dance.” My stomach recoiled as I visualized them together on the dance floor.

“The second prettiest,” he said, glancing at me. “Anyway, maybe we can double.”

I almost scoffed at the suggestion. Nothing could be more torturous than spending an evening watching my nemesis devour Thomas with her manicured tentacles and come-hither eyes. “Sure,” I said, “though I doubt Dirk will ask me.” In fact, I was counting on it.

I

Thomas turned out to be right about Dirk. At the pep rally on Friday, Dirk asked me to homecoming in a way that was impossible to refuse. He called me down to the court, and in front of the entire student body, he handed me a rose and recited some cheesy thing about how I was as beautiful as a freshly bloomed rose. I’d never been so embarrassed in my life, nor felt so utterly trapped. I wanted to say no, but with everyone leaning forward on their seats with gleeful anticipation on their faces, “yes” came out of my mouth. The crowd erupted in cheers as though I’d just accepted a marriage proposal, and as I looked into the bleachers at Thomas, his expression was somewhere between annoyed and sympathetic. Trisha sat next to him looking smug. I knew in that moment that homecoming would go down as the worst night of my adolescent life.

T
hese three measures
should be forte,” Nathaniel said, pointing at the sheet music propped on his piano. “Now go back and play from measure twenty.”

I played it again, doing as he asked. He sat beside the piano, swaying his hand to the rhythm. “Perfect. Now, sometimes the inner voices get buried in broken octaves, but the goal is to uncover them and let them be heard.”

He played a passage to demonstrate, his long, lemur-like fingers striding across the keyboard effortlessly. I followed, trying to replicate the beautiful way he’d played. For an hour we went back and forth, him showing me different dynamics and phrasing, me trying to copy. It was a process I’d become accustomed to in the five weeks since our first meeting.

“You’re coming along wonderfully,” he said as I gathered my sheet music at the end of the lesson. “Next week we’ll choose the final pieces for your audition.”

“Do you think I have a shot?” I asked as he walked me to the door.

“Of course. But how close you get to the mark will depend on how much work you put in these next few months. If you’re as hard a worker as your mom, you’ll be spot on.” He swung open the door, and I glanced at the empty driveway. We’d ended a bit early, and Thomas wasn’t yet back from running errands for his dad.

I turned back to Nathaniel. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure thing.”

“You knew my mom pretty well, right?”

He nodded. “We actually met before Juilliard, at a federation competition.”

“What was she like? I mean, I know what she was like as a mother, but sometimes I wonder what she was like outside of that role. My dad doesn’t like to talk about her, so I was wondering if you could tell me what you remember about her.”

His brow creased thoughtfully, and after a long moment, he said, “She had two left feet. She was always tripping over things. But somehow when she got on the stage, she pulled off poise and elegance.” He smiled, as though reflecting on some specific memory. “She was stubborn, but deeply loyal—once she made up her heart about something, there was no distracting her from it. And intense—she always seemed to feel everything with about ten times the emotion as everyone else. Which could be good, such as when she was playing, and bad, because she often overreacted to things.

“She had incredible intuition. She seemed to always know what people were thinking and what they were going to do even before they did it. In fact, I think she knew your dad wouldn’t support your music the way she wanted after she died.”

“How do you know?”

He hesitated. “She came to see me, before she . . .” He trailed off, like the word was as hard for him to say as it was for me. But this time, I was the one to tackle it.

“Died,” I said quietly.

He gave me a sad smile and shook his head. “It had been years since I’d seen her, and she looked so different.” He released a disheartened sigh. “She was so thin and fragile-looking. It broke my heart to see her that way. She spent the entire time talking about you, about how much she loved you and how talented you were. She was worried that after she died, Jed wouldn’t foster your talent the way she wanted. She asked me to teach you and to help you get into Juilliard. And . . .”

“And what?” I prodded.

“I thought this was a little odd, but she asked me to keep an eye on you, to look out for you and make sure you were okay. I never understood why, of all people, she would ask me. I mean, you didn’t even know me. I suggested to her that she ask one of your grandparents or an aunt or something, but she insisted there was no one else. So I accepted the assignment.”

“You must have been a good friend to her.”

“Well, I wish I would have been a better friend.” He let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry to say that I let her down. I tried to come see you a few times over the years, but I was still traveling a lot, and your dad was a hard man to get around. He wouldn’t let me come near you or even talk to you on the phone.”

“I saw you. A few weeks ago, arguing with my dad in our driveway.”

He nodded. “I’d been feeling guilty about not fulfilling
the promise I made to your mom, and I came to try to convince your dad to let me teach you. Of course, you saw how that turned out. But all these years, I’ve been hoping you’d remember the business card I gave you and that you’d come see me.” He smiled. “And here you are. I’m so glad you found me.”

“I am too,” I said.

The day I’d been dreading for weeks finally arrived, and on a Friday afternoon in mid-October, I lay on my back and slid under my bed. The underside of the box spring was open, and I wiggled a cardboard box from a hollow space between the wood slats. Then I slid back out and sat up, folding my legs beneath me.

With great reverence, I opened the box and lifted out Mom’s evening gown. I stood and held it up in front of a full-length mirror. It was pale periwinkle, with wide lace straps that hung just off the shoulders and a soft, rounded lacy neckline. A wide band of embroidered chiffon cinched the tiny waistline, and a fluttery, cascading swirl of chiffon and lace layered the floor-length skirt. It was ethereal, a timeless dress fit for a goddess. Mom had looked so beautiful in it with her long neck and slender frame as she performed Shostakovich with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic years ago. It had been her last concert and the only time I’d seen her perform onstage. My eight-year-old body had tingled with wonder and awe as I watched her, and as I looked around at the expressions in the audience, I knew they felt the same way. It was the first time in my life I really understood who my mother was. From that moment, I wanted
to be like her. I wanted to be able to put my fingers on an instrument and make people
feel
whatever I wanted them to feel. Anger, passion, hope, serenity, love. There was power in music, and I wanted to be able to channel and manipulate it the way she did.