Part 3
Ms. Voss leaned forward to examine the places Lucy’s fingertips had worn through the paper. She didn’t touch it.
Dr. Bennett asked whether the spacing matched a piano’s. Lucy put her hands down to show her.
“Dad checked. I can do the pieces without looking.”
“And you hear them?”
“Most of them. Mom and I worked on that Chopin before she got sick. I kept the parts going in my head.”
“Your mother taught you,” Dr. Bennett said. “What was her name?”
Lucy pressed down a curled corner of the sheet. The principal waited.
“Hannah Mercer. She gave lessons at our house and played with local groups. For singers, too. Sometimes in Lancaster or Philadelphia.”
“Did you go along?”
“Sometimes. She was really good, but she wasn’t famous.” Lucy looked at the green outlines. “She thought people spent too much time trying to be noticed and not enough time listening.”
Ms. Voss adjusted her sleeve.
Lucy told the principal she’d started learning at four. Then she found herself speaking about appointments during school hours, the knitted cap Hannah pulled off when they got home, and the sharp smell of medicine. Daniel had learned to braid her hair from a video, pausing every few seconds to keep three uneven strands apart.
“She didn’t get to hear me when I was nine,” Lucy said. “She died just after I turned eight.”
Dr. Bennett said she was sorry and gave Lucy time before asking anything else.
After the missed shifts and bills, Lucy explained, they had sold the piano and then the house. In the first rented place, she’d practiced on the bare table until Daniel drew the keys. He kept promising another piano someday, though he couldn’t tell her when.
The principal turned to Ms. Voss.
“Had anyone discussed the family’s circumstances with you?”
“No. None of this was explained to me.”
“I would’ve told you,” Lucy said. “If you’d asked about us.”
She hadn’t meant to say that aloud. Her fingers went still on the paper. Dr. Bennett reached for the phone.
“Your father needs to hear what happened today,” she said. “Can we call him at work?”
Lucy gave her the number.
Daniel arrived less than an hour later with his work badge clipped crookedly to his shirt. Dust had settled into the laces of his safety boots. He caught the door before it swung closed and searched Lucy’s face before looking at either adult.
“What’s happened? Are you all right?”
She took his wrist. “Nothing’s hurt.”
He crouched until she could see he believed her. Dr. Bennett began with the performance, then described the exchange that had made Lucy leave her desk. Daniel listened without removing his cap. When she finished, he stood beside his daughter’s chair.
Ms. Voss spoke before he could.
“I should not have handled the lesson as I did.”
“What were you expecting to happen?” he asked.
She looked toward the principal. “I thought her behavior needed addressing.”
Daniel’s hand tightened around his cap brim. “My daughter said she didn’t want to get up. You made her. Were you counting on her getting it wrong in front of everybody?”
The teacher’s eyes came back to him.
“I thought she’d get stuck,” she said. “I wanted the class to see it.”
Lucy felt his body stiffen beside her. She reached for his hand and caught two fingers. He loosened his grip on the cap immediately and turned his palm toward her.
Dr. Bennett explained that she would make a written record and refer the incident for a district review. Showcase auditions would be judged by more than the music teacher. The counselor could check in with Lucy, provided Lucy wanted that; she would have a say in how the support happened.
Dr. Bennett stayed with the practical arrangements. Neither Lucy nor her father was asked to settle the matter by forgiving the teacher.
Once the immediate arrangements were clear, Dr. Bennett asked whether they could talk about access to an instrument.
“The room is generally free after three-twenty. I can arrange supervision if Lucy would like to practice. And Willowbank Community Music School has scholarships for families who qualify. I know their director.”
Daniel glanced at the paper stretched across his daughter’s lap.
“What would she have to do?”
“Audition. I can help arrange the meeting, but their faculty make the decision.”
He bent toward Lucy. “Would you like me to say yes?”
She thought of the sound still inside her from the classroom. She wanted it again. She was also frightened of what might happen when she sat at the piano without being pushed there, when remembering her mother was a choice she had time to make.
“Yes,” she said. “I want to try.”
On the way home, Daniel started explaining why he hadn’t found another piano sooner. He stopped at a traffic light, tried again, and sounded so ashamed that Lucy interrupted.
“I don’t have to guess where my fingers go. You made all the spaces right.”
He watched the signal. “A child shouldn’t have to make do with a drawing.”
“You didn’t leave me with nothing.”
He took a moment before driving on. “Your mother could do that, too.”
“Do what?”
“Say the one thing I don’t know how to answer.”
The next afternoon, Lucy waited for the buses to clear the parking lot and returned to the music room. The librarian across the hall would remain until the building closed. Dr. Bennett had put a note on the door so nobody would mistake the room for an empty meeting space.
Lucy laid the folded paper beside the bench. Without the class, she could hear the radiator and a cart rolling down the far corridor. She placed her fingers on the real keys and waited for them to begin.
Nothing happened.
Yesterday she’d had to play or face the teacher. Today there was time to remember all the afternoons that should have included her mother. She pressed two notes separately, pulling away after each one as though somebody else had played them.
A shadow crossed the doorway.
Ms. Voss stayed beyond the threshold. “Lucy, may I speak to you? You can send me away. But I need to say something myself, and yesterday’s meeting didn’t take care of it.”
Lucy moved the folded paper away from the end of the bench, although she wasn’t offering the teacher a seat.
“You can talk.”
Ms. Voss entered and stopped beside the sink where they washed paint off the rhythm blocks. From there, she couldn’t look down over Lucy’s hands.
“I looked at your clothes and how quiet you were,” she said. “There were no outside lessons on your forms. I decided you couldn’t know much, and yesterday I tried to prove it.”
Lucy kept her eyes on the keyboard.
“You thought I’d get stuck.”
“I was expecting that, yes.”
“And I asked you not to.”
“You did. I should have stopped there.”
Lucy rubbed a rough place along the underside of the bench. She had expected an excuse.
“Do you know you do it to Tyler?” she asked. The teacher looked toward his empty desk. “He can play the rhythms. He starts thinking about you getting mad, and then he loses them.” Lucy stopped rubbing the wood. “Other kids, too. You already know which ones are going to do well…”
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