The Lucy Variations (14 page)

“You’re the one who just told him to practise!”

Gus looked at him, then at her, and then stomped off to the piano room.

Lucy leaned over the banister, feeling a little bit sorry for her dad. By his own admission, he didn’t get what it meant to be a competitive musician trying to master a piece, not on the inside.

“Dad.”

He looked up.

“Go sit with him while he plays.”

“Really?”

“I mean, don’t stare at him or anything. Take a book. Or your laptop or whatever. Just…be there. It’s lonely sometimes.” Going over and over and over the music. Imagining an audience and a critique. Losing all perspective, not being sure if it was getting better or worse. “Trust me.”

He nodded. “I do.”

Will called while she sat on the bed eating. She counted two rings plus a half of one then picked up. “Hi.”

“Hey.”

There came the awkward pause of people who’ve never talked to each other on the phone before, then they each said, “How are you?” at the same time.

“You first,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Kind of sick this morning, huge headache, but I got extra sleep and a lecture from Gus about drinking. Feeling a little better. Eating pie.” She took a final bite and set her plate on the floor.

“Ha. Martin’s cooking was a major topic of conversation on our way home. But I meant about the you-know-what. Starts with a
p
and ends with
iano
?”

“Ohhhh,
that,”
Lucy said. “Well. I played again today. Chopin. While Gus and my dad were out.”

“And?”

“Awesome.” Lucy reclined on her bed and ran her hand over the comforter. “You know how when you’re playing, and everything else disappears?”

“Yeah, I don’t get that very often any more, myself.”

“Why not?”

He considered. “I’m not sure. Maybe it’s part of getting older. That’s why I like to work with young musicians. You’re still alive in that way.”

“I wasn’t, though. For like a year or something before Prague. I was like…piano zombie.”

“Bet you no one could tell.”

“I could. And it felt really different from that last night, and today.”

“It makes me happy to hear that, Lucy.”

“Me too.” It made her happy to say it, and to feel it.

She listened to his breathing until he asked, “So what’s next?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me.”

“Ah. See now,” he said, “I assumed part of the deal with this was
not
having people tell you what to do.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Try this: sometimes if I’m having trouble knowing what I want, I think through what I
don’t
want and see what’s left.”

That made enough sense. Lucy sat up straighter on the bed. “I know I don’t want to compete.” She didn’t want her mom biting her nails over the repertoire and asking anxious questions about it all the time. She didn’t want Grandpa Beck obsessing over where she ranked and pushing her to perform as much as possible, compete, record, to build her reputation. She didn’t want the competition juries, mostly wrinkled and sour, watching and listening for reasons to downgrade her existence.

“How about performing?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“In some ways that’s the point, right? To share your love? Complete the circle?”

The way he put it sounded a little kumbaya, but it wasn’t that different from what Grandpa Beck said about translation. Who were you translating for? Only yourself? No. All the great composers wrote music that was meant to be heard. The musician, the person at the instrument, was the bridge between the composer’s head and the listener’s ear.

“Yeah,” she agreed.

“Have you thought about conservatory?” Will asked.

“Like for college? Music school?” She had, once upon a time, assumed that would be her path. Then it was like she woke up one day and had turned pro.

“Yeah. Or even the Academy now.”

“Oh, no Beck-Moreau will ever go to the Academy here. Over Grandpa’s dead body. He literally said that once.”

“Eventually you’ll have to stop blaming him and decide what
you
want to do, and just accept you’ll never get his approval,” Will said. “Listen to your old pal Will. I’ve had my own losing battles with that. Just step out of the fight.”

There was a knock on her door. “I have to go,” she said. “I mean, thank you. I have to think.”

“Go enjoy the rest of your weekend. I’ll be around on Monday, if you want to talk.”

“You’re, like, here all the time lately.” Not that she was complaining.

“Your mom e-mailed to ask for extra hours. Grandpa’s orders.”

“See?”

He laughed. “Uh, yeah.”

They said goodbye, and Lucy went to answer her door. Her dad stood at the top of the stairs with his arms folded, and Lucy worried for a second she was in some kind of trouble. Then he said, “I just talked to Mom. She said you called her. Thank you.”

“She didn’t want to talk to me?”

“She didn’t talk to Gus, either. Things sound crazy over there. The connection was bad.”

She shrugged and tried not to let it bother her.

“Is there anything you want to do this weekend together?” he asked. “I took Gus to the movie. I’m available for you, too, chicken.”

Lucy grimaced at her nickname. “That sounds better in French, you know.” As usual his timing was terrible. All she wanted to do was sit and think over what Will had said. “I have a lot of homework. And a
hangover
,” she added, giving his shoulder an affectionate push.

He held up his hands. “My fault. My fault. Okay, I’ll leave you alone. Sweet dreams.” He leaned in for a kiss, then went downstairs.

She returned to where she’d been sitting on the bed and pulled a pillow into her lap. What Will said about conservatory – music school – wormed its way into her. It hadn’t occurred to her that she could still go. The idea of it, the idea of even the remote
possibility
, changed everything.

What could any conservatory possibly teach you?
It was her grandfather’s voice. The voice of pride and ego and worry over what people would think. With her performance and recording background, wasn’t she beyond music school? Would it be going backwards? Evidence of some kind of defeat?

If Will thought so, he wouldn’t have suggested it.

And the Symphony Academy would be a way to dip her toes in before she made any huge decision about college. She could figure out what she wanted. Maybe what she wanted wasn’t even about playing piano. Maybe composing. Or teaching, like Will did. Trying other instruments or even studying music history.

If she went that route – the Symphony Academy – she wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret much longer.

Lucy, eight years old, sitting between Grandma and Grandpa Beck at the symphony hall.

They were there to hear Leon Fleisher, a pianist who had been famous when her grandparents were young. He’d been a child prodigy, making his public debut at eight, Lucy’s age, playing with the New York Philharmonic at age sixteen, and travelling the world.

Then, at the height of his career, his right hand stopped working. Just…stopped.

“But he kept playing,” her grandmother told her, while they waited for the concert to begin. “He kept making music. He conducted; he taught; he developed a repertoire using only his left hand.”

Grandpa Beck had been reading his programme without comment. Lucy’s grandmother leaned forwards, so he would hear her, and said, “Your grandfather thought he should have given up. He predicted Fleisher would never be able to play with both hands again. He thought it undignified that he kept going.”

“You say that as if I were the only one,” he said, flipping the page of his programme.

“Well,” Grandma Beck said to Lucy, settling back in her seat with a smile. “Here we are. And here he is. With both his hands after forty-some-odd years of only the one, older than me.”

Lucy watched the performance, watched Fleisher’s hands for any sign of imperfection. At one point her grandfather whispered to Lucy, “There. He missed a note in that phrase.”

She hadn’t noticed. It sounded beautiful to her, and she liked the way he sat relatively still on the bench, did not make huge flourishes or use dramatic head movement. He let the music speak. Lucy always remembered that and tried to do the same when she performed, and aside from the subtle rocking she couldn’t quit, stayed still for the music, let it speak.

The audience stood for him for a long time, and Grandma Beck one of the first ones up.

“A pity ovation,” her grandfather said, but when Lucy looked at him, there were tears running down his face.

On Saturday Reyna texted Lucy
that they should work off some pie.
Lucy walked to her house; Abby answered the door. “Is Gus with you?” she asked.

“Hi. No, sorry,” Lucy said. “He’s chained to his piano. Where’s your sister?”

“Asleep.”

“Uh-oh.” She jogged up the stairs and found Reyna in bed, listless and dazed.

“I guess I fell back asleep after I texted you,” she said.

Lucy pulled the covers off her. “What do you want to wear?”

“Yoga pants. Hoodie. You know the socks I like.”

Reyna didn’t move while Lucy got her clothes out and tossed everything on the bed. “I’m not going to dress you myself.”

“I need coffee.”

“You can have coffee after we walk,” Lucy said, hoisting her up by the forearms.

“Why are you so mean to me?”

The day was cold and overcast, not the best walking weather. And Lucy had a new headache, this time concentrated at her left temple in a way that made her want to push her fingers into it to stop the throbbing. When they were out on the street and halfway up the first block, she said, “So after you left on Thursday, Aruna and Gus went—”

“Who?”

“Aruna. Will’s wife?”

“Oh yeah.”

“She and Gus went to the TV room, and the rest of us went to the piano room, and I was like, I don’t know…” They were breathing hard, pumping their arms. “I
sat
there at the piano and—”

“Oh my God.” Reyna yanked Lucy’s hand and pulled her towards the kerb. “We have to cross the street. That’s one of my dad’s girlfriends.”

Lucy looked at the figure coming in their direction from over a block away. When they got to the other side of the street, Reyna said, “They’re everywhere. I feel like we have to move to another state or something.”

“Don’t move. Okay, so I don’t know what came over me, but—”

“Are you talking about the pier? Because I don’t know, either.”

Lucy stopped walking and folded her arms against the wind. “No, I’m talking about Thursday. Are you even listening?”

“Yes?” Reyna had stopped, too.

“No, you’re not.”

“Sorry,” Reyna said with a shrug, and started walking again. Lucy didn’t follow right away. When she did she walked at a slower pace than Reyna, forcing her to turn around. “Wednesday night was a little
weird
, is all. You didn’t even ask if you could wear my dress.”

“You said it was okay! You didn’t want it. You were going to throw it out.”

“You already had it on! What was I supposed to say?” They were at a junction. Reyna jabbed the walk-signal button about ten times in quick succession.

“And then at Thanksgiving you were…I don’t know. You’re not
you
.”

The light turned, and they crossed. “I’m me. How was I not me?” They walked in silence for a couple of blocks. “And what if I
am
different?” Lucy asked. “A lot happened to me while I was out of school. Maybe the me who came back last spring wasn’t really me. I don’t know.”

They stopped at another crossing, stepped off the kerb, and almost got run down by a car making a right turn. “Asshole!” Reyna shouted. Then said to Lucy, “A lot happened to me, too. And I wish you’d been there.”

“Well, me too.”

When it was safe, they crossed. Reyna had led them to Peet’s Coffee, and now they stood outside the door and could see their reflections. She said to Lucy’s, “Of course you can change. But tell me. Like if you’re going to go back to how your life was before, give me some warning because…it was hard.”

They stepped apart to make space for a man who came out with a coffee cup in his hand. When he’d passed through, Lucy said, “I’ll never go back to how it was before. I promise.”

“Okay,” Reyna said quietly.

On Sunday morning Lucy helped Martin drag the Christmas decorations out of the huge closet under the staircase, and they adorned the banisters with garlands and put together the artificial tree for the hall. The rest of the day passed in a haze of homework. Lucy decided that reading about the Middle Ages was almost as excruciating as living through them. It made her actually enjoy doing her calculus.

Gus came up to her room once to use the laptop, which he took over to the bed while she sat at her desk. He recited his day’s activities: he’d spent two hours with the Wii, watched about five episodes of some horror show, and binged on pie.

“Now that’s a day off,” Lucy said.

“I saved you the last piece of the chocolate pecan.”

She turned in her chair. “Really? That’s your favourite.”

“Yours too.” He typed something into the computer.

“What are you looking up?” she asked. Wii cheat codes, she figured, or clips from the movie he and their dad had seen.

“Nothing.”

She went over to him, to make sure he wasn’t looking at anything little boys shouldn’t be looking at. “Who’s Kim Choi?” she asked, when she saw the list of results on the screen.

“Someone I’m playing against in February. It’s a he. Grandpa said he’s really good.”

“So are you.”

Gus shook his head. “He’s better.”

Lucy closed the laptop, barely giving him a chance to snatch his fingers away. “Don’t think about it like ‘playing against’. Don’t even think about it at
all
. It’s in February.”

“February is close.” He reached to reopen the screen; she clamped down on it.

“Gus,” she said, “do you want to end up like me?” She pointed at herself and made a face.

“Yyyeah,” he said carefully.

Lucy sat there, her finger suspended in mid-air and still pointing at her chest, a host of reactions coursing through her. “How do you mean?”

“Like how you worked hard and won things and got to go around the world and stuff. And then if I don’t want to do it any more, I’ll quit. Like you.”

She put her arm down. “I wasn’t happy, Gus.” She’d explained this to him after Prague.

“I know. You had to.”

“But you won’t have to,” she said.

“Only if I want to.”

You’re so good, though
, she caught herself thinking. She immediately corrected the thought. Being good wasn’t a reason to keep doing something you didn’t want to do. The voice in her head, sounding exactly like her grandfather, countered,
You’re ten. How can you know what you want?

She imagined Gus quitting. Walking away, suddenly, as she had. She could understand a little more why everyone had been so let down. Maybe her family’s reaction hadn’t been
all
about Grandpa Beck wanting to avoid embarrassment or claim her success, or about her mom making up for her own failure. It was like her dad had said, and Martin, about how playing the way she and Gus could was a gift. Common between the two of them but rare in the world. And hearing Gus say, so easily, “Only if I want to”, made her also realize that maybe jumping ship at Prague hadn’t
all
been about her grandma. Maybe it was, in part, as simple as a ten-year-old’s reason: I don’t want to.

“It’s normal to need a break,” she told Gus. “Like today. But do you ever? Want to quit?” She braced herself.

“No,” Gus said. “Now I have Will.”

Lucy picked up the laptop and went back to her desk. She didn’t want him to see her relief and adjust future answers to that question to anything but his own feelings.

Yeah. Now we have Will.
Maybe she should tell him, as long as they were having this deep brother-sister talk, about her own conversations with Will. “Gus…” she started.

“I think he’s my best friend.”

She turned. He looked so sweet and sincere. She could tell him all the reasons his grown-up piano teacher could
not
be his best friend. No one he’d known such a short time could be.

But that would make her a hypocrite.

“Okay,” she said. “Just promise me you’ll stop googling the competition.”

“Promise.”