Part 4
Lucy brought the clean page to Riverbend two weeks later.
The community music center occupied a former branch library downtown. The old circulation desk served as reception, and six practice rooms had been built where the children’s shelves once stood. Through the walls came the muffled starts and stops of scales, a trumpet, and someone repeating four violin notes.
Dan had submitted the financial-aid application and two pay stubs. The assessment would determine Lucy’s level; a separate review would decide whether the access fund could support a trial.
Ruth Adler waited in a small recital room with a mechanical pencil and a soft brace around her right thumb. She was in her late sixties and did not wear the bright, encouraging expression adults often used before asking a child to perform.
“What have you played on a real instrument since the classroom incident?” she asked.
“Parts of this. Scales. A Bach invention.”
“Which invention?”
Lucy told her.
“Start there.”
The Bach exposed everything the paper keyboard had concealed. Lucy’s left hand tired halfway through. Two ornaments landed unevenly, and she used the pedal out of habit where the piece needed none.
Ruth wrote without hiding the pencil.
When Lucy finished, the teacher asked for two scales, a short sight-reading passage, and several measures repeated after hearing them once. Then she pointed to the Debussy score.
“Why did you bring that?”
“Because it’s where I stop.”
Ruth looked at the markings that ended halfway down the third page. “Play until you decide to stop.”
The piano’s action was lighter than Cedar Ridge’s grand. Lucy overplayed the first chord, corrected, and continued. She was less frightened by sound now, but her hands still tried to hold each successful phrase in place.
By the second page, the music had begun to move.
At the final penciled fingering, Lucy’s right wrist stiffened. She finished the measure, lifted both hands, and said, “That’s it.”
“You know what comes next.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“Not the same thing.”
“I know.”
Ruth tapped the side of the score with her pencil. “Your ear is well ahead of your hands. Your pedaling blurred two changes. Your left forearm tired, and you stopped before the hardest section.”
Lucy stared at the keys.
Ruth set down the pencil. “You’ve had serious training. You also have thirteen months of work to rebuild. Both things are true.”
“Could I play this at our arts night in May?”
“You can audition for anything you choose.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
The corner of Ruth’s mouth shifted, though it was not quite a smile.
“If the audition were tomorrow, I’d advise against it.”
Lucy felt the answer land beneath her ribs.
Ruth turned to the unmarked page. “May isn’t tomorrow.”
Two days later, Riverbend offered Lucy a twelve-week trial supported by its access fund. It covered one weekly lesson with Ruth and Saturday practice-room time. Cedar Ridge supplied two additional practice afternoons through aftercare.
Nothing in the letter promised what would happen after twelve weeks.
Dan read the schedule at the kitchen table.
“Tuesdays I can swap with Aaron as long as he keeps agreeing,” he said. “Saturdays we take the bus unless the car decides to become trustworthy.”
“You’ll lose overtime.”
“Some.”
“How much?”
“Enough that we plan for it. Not enough that you decide for me.”
Lucy knew he meant the answer gently. It still sounded like a locked door.
At school, Sophie sat beside Lucy during indoor recess and placed her Mozart score between them.
“You were right about the F-sharp,” she said.
Lucy waited for the rest.
“I still didn’t like you doing that under the desk.”
“I wasn’t trying to fix you.”
“It looked like you were.”
Lucy rubbed a blue ink stain on the side of her finger. “I was checking if I still knew it.”
Sophie considered this. “You could’ve checked during somebody else’s song.”
“I’m sorry.”
Sophie opened the score to the transition she had rushed. “Would you tell me if my left hand gets there too early?”
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes. This time.”
Their first attempt was not exactly friendly. It was careful, and that was enough.
During Lucy’s first official lesson, Ruth did not begin with Clair de Lune. She assigned scales, a short study for balance between the hands, and three pages of sight-reading that Lucy disliked on sight.
Only during the final ten minutes did Ruth open Elise’s score.
“Your mother’s fingering fits until here,” she said, pointing to the clean section. “The next reach is too wide for your hand if you copy what I use.”
Ruth demonstrated the shape above the keyboard without pressing the keys. Her thumb brace prevented her from spanning the chord comfortably.
“Choose a fingering,” she said.
Lucy tried two possibilities. The first twisted her wrist; the second left her late for the following note. On the third attempt, the passage moved awkwardly but without strain.
Ruth handed her the pencil.
Lucy positioned the tip above the first blank measure. Elise’s numbers ended three lines earlier in soft graphite. The new mark would be darker.
Her hand remained there until the lesson clock ran out…
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