Part 6
At Tuesday’s lesson, Lucy opened the score to that page before Beatrice could ask what she wanted to work on.
“She stopped writing here.”
Beatrice looked through the earlier pages, then returned to the empty margins. “All right. You’ll have to decide some things yourself.”
Lucy placed her hands and tried the opening measures. She made every movement exact, leaving no chance for a note to surprise her. By the end of the line, she could hear how lifeless it sounded.
“You’re being careful with something besides the music,” Beatrice said.
Lucy looked at the little groove worn into the older woman’s pencil.
“Tell me what you’re guarding,” Beatrice said.
“I don’t want Mom’s part to get smaller.”
Beatrice waited until Lucy looked up.
“What do you think would make that happen?”
“If I can do the rest with you.”
The older woman set the pencil down. “I’ve heard how she taught you every time you sit at this instrument. You haven’t stopped using it because I’ve helped you with a passage.”
They began again, slowly enough for Lucy to hear the chords without holding every muscle still. She played several measures badly. Beatrice asked her to try a different fingering, then choose the one that fit her hand.
“Write it down. You’ll want to remember why you chose it.”
Lucy’s first number was much darker than Hannah’s faded marks on the opposite page. She rubbed it out until only a gray impression remained, then wrote more lightly. Farther along, she stopped comparing the two and put down a clear, ordinary three.
At the end of the hour, Beatrice shut the score without commenting on the difference in handwriting. Lucy had added enough to practice the page at home.
That week, Dr. Bennett asked Daniel and Lucy about a classroom apology. Ms. Voss wanted to address the children who had witnessed the incident, and the principal wanted their wishes understood before it happened.
Daniel said the other students needed to hear that what they’d seen was wrong. He also wanted to make sure Lucy wouldn’t be required to help her teacher look better.
“She can hear it without accepting anything on command,” he said.
Lucy agreed to attend. She would sit at her own desk, and nobody would ask her for a speech.
The following morning, Ms. Voss left the lesson materials in the cabinet. She stood where she usually demonstrated the day’s rhythm and looked across all the rows.
“I took Lucy’s silence to mean she didn’t know much,” she said. “On Tuesday I put her at the piano because I wanted to prove I was right.”
Lucy rested her feet flat on the floor.
“She asked me not to. I made her get up anyway, in front of all of you. That was wrong. I’m sorry, Lucy.”
Ms. Voss looked toward the other rows.
“I’ve also made some of you afraid to make a mistake in this room. When you miss a note or a beat, you’re showing me what we need to work on. My job is to help you.”
Tyler glanced sideways at Lucy. She met his eyes and nodded once.
Ms. Voss told the children they could respectfully tell her when a response made it harder to learn. Then she brought out the exercise sheets and began the lesson. Lucy wasn’t called upon to reassure her.
Over the next few weeks, the concert program settled into place. Lucy and Simon rehearsed a short arrangement of “The Swan,” allowing his violin to carry the tune while she supported it at the piano. Paige earned a Mozart solo before the panel of Ms. Voss, Dr. Bennett, and a Willowbank instructor. The same panel chose Lucy’s Debussy to close the evening.
Paige said congratulations without looking at the floor. During rehearsals, Lucy began to understand how much effort that had cost her. Paige’s mother watched from the auditorium and corrected the angle of her daughter’s shoulders. Twice, she asked Ms. Voss whether the judges had compared how demanding the selections were.
After a run-through, Paige sat on the stage with her shoes dangling over the edge.
“Mom thinks I should be mad about going before you.”
Lucy sat down a little way from her. “Do you think so?”
“I kind of am. But then someone else plays well and I’m supposed to be mad about that, too. It gets boring.”
Lucy picked up a scrap of tape somebody had left on the stage. “I don’t think I used up the good playing.”
“I know. It just takes a while for the rest of me to catch up.”
“Mine does that.”
Paige laughed. Lucy had heard her polite laugh before, but this one arrived without any preparation.
At home, Daniel learned which passages needed quiet and which Lucy didn’t mind hearing dishes through. Sometimes a neighbor paused outside before continuing down the hall. One left a friendly request that scales finish by eight, and Daniel attached it to the refrigerator so they would remember.
The paper keyboard lived inside the bench now. Lucy still knew which way to unfold it, but whole evenings went by without her taking it out.
Three days before the concert, she played the Debussy through without stopping. Daniel had been rinsing a pan. When she turned, he was holding it under water that had long since run clear.
“Dad?”
He shut off the faucet.
“Did the ending sound right?”
He nodded, unable to look at her yet. Lucy stayed on the bench.
On concert night, a warm wind kept lifting the notices taped beside the school entrance. Families arrived early. Several Willowbank teachers came, along with district staff and local musicians who had first heard Lucy in the recording.
Dr. Bennett had reserved places at the front for Daniel and Beatrice. Beatrice reached hers with a wrapped bouquet balanced against her cane. The chair beside her remained unoccupied.
Backstage, Lucy read a message sent just before seven.
“Equipment trouble. Still working on it. I’ll leave as soon as we’re cleared. Count on me.”
The distribution center was eleven miles away. Their car had started overheating earlier that week, and Daniel was relying on a coworker for the ride. Lucy put her phone away, then checked it once more without finding anything new.
Simon watched her from his folding chair.
“Your dad’ll make it.”
“He’s trying,” she said.
Their duet came early in the program. Simon’s bow shook at the beginning, so Lucy gave him a little more time between changes until he found the pace. They finished together. Paige’s Mozart followed with the assurance of someone who had done her practice, and the choir and percussion group carried the evening onward.
Tyler kept his rhythm. Ms. Voss let the percussionists finish fully before signaling that they could lower their sticks.
For her closing performance, Lucy changed into a plain plum-colored dress Beatrice had found at a secondhand shop. She spread the paper keyboard across her lap and went silently through the Debussy’s opening. Its old green boundaries were familiar enough that she didn’t have to watch her hands.
Ms. Voss approached without touching the paper.
“We could move another group ahead of you. Dr. Bennett can arrange it if you’d like to wait.”
Lucy peered past the curtain. Her father’s place was still empty.
“He drew this so I could keep going when we didn’t have a piano,” she said. “I don’t think he’d want me to stop now.” The stage manager gave her the signal. Lucy folded the pages, tucked them under her chair, and went out to the grand. She acknowledged the applause and sat down. For a moment she could see every detail of the vacant chair beside Beatrice. Then she faced the keyboard and pressed the opening chord…
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