Porcelain Keys (19 page)

“I haven’t been a good father to you,” he said after a long silence. “I’ve known that for a long time. But when you left, I realized just how awful I’ve been.” He shook his head. “What a horrible person I must be to drive you away like that. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I do care about you, Aria. And I’ve done the best I could under the circumstances.”

I wasn’t sure which circumstances he was referring to, but I assumed he was referring to having to raise me as a widower. I thought briefly about all the other single fathers out there who had raised their children without hurting them, without keeping them from the things they cherished most. I didn’t know whether or not to believe his penitent words. There was one way, I thought, to find out just how sincere he was.

“If you care about me,” I said, “then tell me what you did with Mom’s music box.”

He stared at me for a long time without moving, until his mouth began twisting and pursing. But no words came out.

“Please, Dad. You don’t know how much it means to me.”

I could almost see the words in his mouth, fighting to get out. After another painfully long pause, he said matter-of-factly, “It’s gone.”

I felt an irritated muscle twitch near my shoulder blade, calling my attention to the tenseness gripping my entire body. I willed my muscles to relax, but they remained taut as though preparing for a fight. “What was in it?” My voice was calm, but I could feel flames beginning to crawl beneath my skin.

He took off his gloves, then put them back on, then off again. All the while, his face grew more and more pale.

“What was in it?” I repeated impatiently.

He finally met my eyes and allowed his lips to release one word. “Letters.”

“Letters?” I repeated in a vacant whisper. “What letters?”

His face was blank now, like he’d retreated elsewhere and left only his lips to do the explaining. “There were six of them. One for each birthday up to your eighteenth.”

Air rushed out of my lungs, like I’d been smacked in the ribs with a baton. I pictured her precious words, written on sheets of stationary, all lost to me now. “What did they say?” I asked weakly.

“How much she loved you, and . . . some advice—things she wanted you to know when you were older.”

“What advice?”

His eyes grew cold and his expression became defensive. “It’s been almost six years. I can’t remember the details.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Why did you keep them from me?”

“Because I loved you. I thought it was what was best for you.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. How would keeping Mom’s letters from me be best for me?”

“The things she had to say . . . would have put a wedge between us. And I didn’t want that.”

“Keeping her letters, and the piano, and her memory from me is what put a wedge between us. A music box and words of advice couldn’t have changed the way I felt about you if you had treated me with kindness.”

A wave of sorrow washed over his face. “I’m sorry, Aria. I did what I thought would be best. And as bad as things were between us, they would have been worse if you’d read those letters. But I regret other things. I regret treating you the way I did. I regret hurting you.”

“Do you regret tearing Mom’s notebook into pieces? Do you regret taking a crow bar to her piano? Because those things hurt me even more than the physical pain you inflicted.”

He grimaced. “Yes, I regret those things too.”

I spun around and marched down the porch steps and through the snow to the parlor window. I cupped my hands over my brow and peered in. Just as it had been on Christmas Eve, the broken piano pieces still rested on the floor, untouched, now collecting dust. Anger burned down my arms, scorching my fingertips.

I heard Dad’s footsteps, and I spun around to see him standing behind me. “Aria, I—”

“You’re not sorry,” I said through tight lips. “If you were, you would try to fix the things you’ve broken. You would tell me what Mom’s letters said. You would tape up the pieces of her notebook. You would fix her piano.” My voice grew louder and sharper with each exclamation. “You would have called me sooner and begged for my forgiveness instead of waiting for me to come to you! You saved my life, but not because you love me. You did it because you were on the clock and it was your duty!”

He didn’t say anything. He just stared down at the snow, his face falling into a guarded expression. The fire under my skin spread down my legs and to my feet, licking at my heels and urging me to escape from the man who had robbed me of love and security, of dreams and of the priceless words of a deceased mother.

Without saying another word, I turned and walked away.

I cried the entire way home, and soon my tears for Dad turned into tears for Thomas. I thought how if I could just talk to Thomas, it would make all the pain go away. It had been over a month since he left, and I was desperate to hear his voice tell me that everything was still the same between us.

Nathaniel was at the piano with a student when I came in, his back turned to me. I slipped past and into my room, where I quietly closed the door. Snatching up the phone from the bedside table, I dialed Thomas’s cell.

My heart leapt at the sound of his “Hello,” but then plummeted to my feet when it was followed by “please leave a message.”

Voice mail.

I hung up, my hands suddenly clammy with anxiety. Why hadn’t he answered? And why hadn’t he called me yet? I picked up the phone again and called the number he’d left me for his parents’ house in Pasadena, then paced the room, counting the rings.

Richard answered.

“Is Thomas there?” I wanted to sound calm, but my voice rose, betraying me.

Richard snorted. “No, and if I ever see him again I’m gonna beat his head in with a bat.”

After recovering from his threatening words, I asked shakily, “Where is he?”

“Like I would know.” Richard started calling Thomas all kinds of expletives, then said, “The last time I saw him was two days ago, when he gave me stitches. Right above the eye. He’s lucky I’m not blind.” He spouted off more insults, then added, “He tore the house to pieces too and left me to clean it up.”

Richard kept talking, but all I could hear was my pulse pounding in my ears. The things he was saying about Thomas sounded all wrong. Thomas didn’t give people stitches and tear houses apart. Thomas comforted, mended, healed. Richard must have provoked him.

“So if you see him,” Richard finished, “tell him I’d better never see him again.” He hung up.

I set down the phone, feeling like someone had just pummeled
me
with a bat and dropped me in the middle of a desert without a compass. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm myself so that I could think rationally. If he’d left his parents’, then maybe he was on his way here. Maybe he would call soon, and I could talk to him and make sure he was okay, that
we
were okay.

I tried to take comfort in the prospect, but something Richard had said nagged at me. He said that Thomas had torn the house to pieces. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t imagine Thomas doing something like that. Maybe Richard had exaggerated to upset me. From the way he’d treated me on Christmas Eve, I wouldn’t put it past him.

I went and stood in front of Thomas’s painting tacked on my wall. I gazed at the boy with the dark hair sitting on the porch swing, and the sharp uneasiness dulled somewhat. I studied the intricate texture of the trees and flowers, details that his hands had spent hours creating just for me.
I was certain that within days, I would hear his voice, or better yet, see his face. He would explain what had happened with Richard, and I could tell him about Dad, and all my fears would be put to rest.

I stood on the ninth floor of the Empire Hotel in New York City, staring out the window at the feathery snowflakes falling to the street below. In less than two hours, I would walk down the snow-covered sidewalk to The Juilliard School and spend fifteen minutes showcasing the pieces I’d spent hundreds of hours perfecting. The melodies that had been constantly playing through my head were now silent. Like a cast of performers who’d spent months rehearsing, they were now quietly tucked backstage in folds of black velour drapes, impatiently waiting for the curtain to rise.

Despite the imminence of my audition, my mind wasn’t on Chopin and Beethoven, or on the four judges who were sitting in the fifth-floor studio of Juilliard right now. It was on Thomas. I still hadn’t heard from him, and it had been three weeks since I’d spoken to Richard.

I heard the door open, and I turned to see Nathaniel with a small paper bag in his hand and two white Styrofoam cups in a cup holder. The thought of eating made me nauseous, and I felt my face recoil.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Nathaniel chided. “You need to eat something if you’re going to be at your best. Here—come sit down.” He set the food on a table by the window, and I sat. The room was bright, with clean modern lines and white and olive furnishings. Square white lamps and bulbous vases of daffodils were sprinkled about, and a swirly sculpture rose from the table like a silver flame.
He pulled out a softball-size blueberry muffin and set it in front of me. “Eat up.”

I pinched off bite-size pieces from the muffin while Nathaniel sat across from me and gave me a last minute pep talk, reminding me of all the nuances we’d worked on over the last couple months—building up crescendos and punctuating staccatos and a million other things I didn’t need him to remind me of. “I’ve got it,” I mumbled.

He stopped talking and watched me pick at my muffin. “I know you do,” he said over the rims of his square glasses. “But your thoughts are somewhere else.”

I swallowed a bite, which took much more effort than it should have, then whispered, “Why hasn’t he called?”

“Who?” Then understanding lit up his face. “Oh. Thomas.”

The sound of his name made my insides twist up. “Something is wrong.” I hadn’t told Nathaniel about my conversation with Richard, so I told him now about Richard’s harsh words, about Thomas leaving, and about the stitches.

“Thomas gave his brother stitches?”

I nodded. “It doesn’t sound like something he’d do. But if it’s true, it makes me wonder what state of mind he’s in. If he’s not at his parents’ house, then why hasn’t he come here? Where is he? You would think he would have called me, or that he would answer my calls. What if something happened to him?”

Nathaniel laid his hand on my shoulder and let out a heavy sigh. “No need to imagine the worst. He just lost his parents, and he’s probably sorting through a mountain of emotions right now. Just give him some time. His head will eventually clear up, and when he’s ready to call, he’ll call.”

I imagined Thomas somewhere, all alone and grieving.
It hurt me that he wouldn’t let me be there for him. But maybe he wasn’t alone at all. Maybe he’d found comfort in someone else. An image assaulted me, one of a blonde girl painted on a canvas on Thomas’s wall.
Sasha
. I felt a stab of jealousy as I wondered if she’d attended the funeral, and I dropped the bit of muffin in my grasp.

Nathaniel leaned back in his chair and studied me for a moment. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you, like you’re the most precious thing in the world to him.” A reminiscent smile crept over his lips. “You should have seen his face that first day you came to see me, when you played for me. You had the kid spellbound. I’ve never seen someone so enamored.”

I managed a smile, and my heart did a little flip at the memory of playing for Thomas. Nathaniel was right. Thomas didn’t love Sasha; he loved me.

“He has some deep wounds right now, but that doesn’t mean his heart has changed.” Nathaniel took my hand and patted it gently, a line of concentration deepening between his brows. “You’ve always been good at infusing your emotions into your music. Today shouldn’t be any different. Take everything you’re feeling, and lay it out on those keys.”

I nodded in understanding, then went to my room to get dressed for the audition. I put on an airy black dress that fell just above my knees, and pumps that were low enough that I wouldn’t stumble on my way to the piano. I pinned my hair into a loose bun and put on some simple pearl earrings.

We bundled up and walked down the bustling sidewalk, past tourists pointing cameras, men in suits hailing cabs, and scraggy musicians playing behind open cello cases.
Nathaniel tossed a twenty into one of them and complimented the man’s playing.

We came to a grandiose white marble building bearing the name of “The Juilliard School” and entered through two sets of heavy glass doors into the lobby. Our footsteps echoed as we crossed the cavernous room to the elevator, where Nathaniel pressed the button for the fifth floor. “You nervous?” he asked as the elevator began to rise.

“No,” I said. “I feel strangely calm.” It was true. I felt subdued, like every nerve in my body was peacefully sleeping, and I wondered if it was the effect of grief.

As we stepped out of the elevator, a large woman with unnaturally red hair walked by. She glanced at us, and when her eyes fell on Nathaniel, her face lit up.

“
Regarde qui viens là!
Mr. Borough!” She rushed to him and air-kissed him on the cheeks. Wrinkles framed her eyes behind her rhinestone-speckled glasses, and I was unsure if the red puff of hair on her head was real or a wig. “What gives us the pleasure?” Her French lilt made her voice musical, and the last word rose and fell like the sound of a door bell.

Nathaniel gestured to me. “This is my student, Aria Kinsley. She’s auditioning for piano today.”

The woman’s hands flew to her face and she gasped. “Oh, this is wonderful!” She reached for my hand, clasping it in hers like we were old friends. “I’m sure he taught you well, did he not?”

“Yes,” I said, glancing at Nathaniel. “I wouldn’t be here without his help.”

“Aria,” Nathaniel said, “this is Margo D’Aramitz. She’s been an instructor here for . . .”

“Twenty-eight years,” Margo finished.

“Margo, Aria is Karina’s daughter.”

“Is your mother here?” She stared at me expectantly.