Part 3
“From there,” Nora said.
Ms. Hensley stayed beyond the threshold. Ms. Patel left her book open on the table and kept her chair where it was.
“I owe you an apology, Nora.”
Nora looked at the teacher’s shoes, carefully clear of the doorway.
“What are you sorry about?”
“For forcing you to play.”
Nora waited. Ms. Hensley glanced at the folded paper on the rack.
“And for deciding what you meant without asking. You broke the piano rule, you hadn’t answered the question about lessons, and Audrey was upset. I treated those things as if they told me everything.”
“They didn’t.”
“No. I could have spoken to you when class was over.”
Nora hooked a finger under the bench’s upholstered edge.
“You hoped I’d fail.”
Ms. Hensley’s eyes went briefly to the keys.
“Yes.”
Nora pulled her finger free. There was a thin line in the skin where the wood had pressed it.
The teacher explained that she would arrange the spring arts-night schedule but would not evaluate Nora’s audition. A district arts coordinator and a music teacher from another school would make that decision. Dr. Whitcomb would also observe her classes and direct the other corrective work.
Nora listened to the names of the adults who would now be involved. She didn’t tell Ms. Hensley any of it sounded sufficient.
“Did Audrey think I was making fun of her?”
“She thought you were finding fault with her playing.”
“I was trying not to forget mine.”
“I understand. Audrey hadn’t been told that.”
Nora turned toward the paper on the rack. A fold ran through the place where her left hand usually rested.
“Mateo can get back into the beat,” she said. “But you make that noise before he has a chance.”
Ms. Hensley’s mouth opened, then closed.
“I’ll pay attention to that.”
“You haven’t told him you’re sorry.”
“No,” the teacher said. “I haven’t.”
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke. Ms. Patel shifted the attendance sheet away from the edge of her table.
Nora faced the piano again.
“I want to practice without you here.”
“All right.”
Ms. Hensley’s footsteps moved down the hall. Nora waited until she couldn’t hear them, then put her hands over the opening of the nocturne.
The chord was too loud again. She loosened her wrists and played the one after it.
At supper, Ben kept the application away from the steam rising out of their bowls. He had filled in his wages, their address, and the box explaining that Nora had no instrument. The questions about previous instruction and transportation were still blank.
At the bottom, the form asked what the student hoped to gain from the placement.
“That one’s yours,” he said, sliding it closer.
Nora folded the edge of her toast into the soup. “I don’t know what to say.”
“We don’t have to finish tonight.”
She watched him put the cap on the pen.
“Is any of Mom’s music still here?”
He laid the pen down carefully.
“Some of it went with the piano.”
Nora kept looking at him. After a moment, his eyes moved toward the hall closet.
She knew the flat storage box on its top shelf. It traveled with them at every move, always carried by Ben, never set down with the other cartons. She had thought it held papers about the house.
He got up, moved a bundle of blankets, and brought it to the table. One latch resisted until he pressed the lid down with his palm.
“I kept what I could,” he said.
There were photographs under a recital program, a metronome wrapped in a hand towel, and a few sharpened pencils held together with a rubber band. Beneath them lay six scores.
Nora recognized her mother’s handwriting on a repaired cover. She moved that book aside and found the nocturne underneath.
“You told me we didn’t have it.”
Ben lowered himself into his chair. “I did.”
“All that time I was trying to remember.”
“I didn’t know which piece you were doing.”
“You knew I used the paper.”
“Yes.”
She opened the cover, then shut it without looking inside.
“Why couldn’t I have this?”
He worked the rubber band off the pencils. It broke between his fingers.
“I’d open the box, and then I couldn’t stay there with it. I kept putting the lid back on.”
“You said it would hurt me.”
“I thought leaving it put away would help.”
“Help who?”
Ben looked at the broken rubber band on the table.
“Me,” he said.
The soup was cooling. Nora could see a thin skin forming around the edge of his bowl, but she didn’t move it toward him.
“You could watch me on the paper because you didn’t have to hear anything.”
He pressed his lips together before answering.
“I’m sorry, Nora.”
She drew the score onto her lap.
The first page was crowded with evidence of lessons: a fingering changed twice, a bracket over notes she used to hurry, a little arrow telling her where to lift. Mara had written one reminder at an angle because Nora remembered her reaching over the top of the rack to do it.
Farther in, the pencil grew faint. Some numbers had been retraced; others were barely visible unless Nora tipped the page toward the kitchen light.
Halfway down the third page, they ended.
Nora ran a finger beneath the last number. She turned the page and then another, opening the book flat on the table.
Only the printed music went on…
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