Part 4
The score wouldn’t lie flat on the piano at the music center. Nora held one corner down while an elderly woman adjusted a lamp beside the rack.
Two weeks had passed since Ben opened the storage box. Now the application and copies of his pay stubs were in an office somewhere behind the old library’s circulation desk. This appointment would establish Nora’s playing level; someone else would decide whether the access fund had room for her.
The woman introduced herself as Judith Feld. A soft brace supported her right thumb, and she used her other hand to pull a chair close enough to see Nora’s wrists.
Outside the recital room, a trumpet kept beginning the same scale. The building had once held shelves and reading tables; new walls divided the former children’s section into practice rooms, though sound still traveled through them.
“Tell me what you’ve worked on since you got back to a keyboard,” Judith said.
“A nocturne. Scales. A two-part invention.”
Judith asked which one, then moved the nocturne aside.
“Give me the invention first.”
Nora’s left hand began to tire before she was halfway through. An ornament came out lopsided, and her foot went to the pedal even though she knew the lines needed to stay separate.
Judith made notes. She didn’t lower the paper out of Nora’s sight or stop writing when Nora glanced toward it.
Afterward came two scales, a piece Nora hadn’t seen before, and a listening exercise. Judith played several measures and asked her to repeat them. Nora could find those more easily than she could keep her hands even in the scales.
Judith brought the nocturne back to the rack.
“This was the one you wanted me to hear?”
“It’s the one I can’t get past.”
The teacher examined the third page. Her pencil paused beside Mara’s final marking, but she didn’t write anything there.
“Show me where you are.”
The center’s piano took less effort than the school grand. Nora gave the first chord too much force, then adjusted before the melody entered. Her fingers still held themselves ready after each difficult change, as if relaxing might make the notes escape her.
She made it through the opening and the second page. At the familiar stopping place, her right wrist drew upward. She finished the measure, took her foot off the pedal, and folded her hands.
“I can hear the next part,” she said before Judith asked. “I just can’t play it.”
Judith let the silence settle before pulling her chair closer.
“Your listening has kept developing. Your hands haven’t had that chance. We’ll need to rebuild stamina, control, and the connection between the two.”
“Was it bad?”
“You had two pedal changes that covered the harmony, and your left arm was working too hard. But whoever taught you gave you a proper foundation.”
Nora looked at her mother’s writing.
Judith set her notes on the chair beside her. “Those things can all be true together.”
“Our school has arts night in May. Could this be ready?”
“You’re allowed to submit whichever piece—”
“I mean could I play it?”
Judith looked at her for a moment. A crease appeared at one corner of her mouth.
“I wouldn’t recommend it for an audition this week.” She turned to the unfinished section. “We have longer than that.”
The offer arrived two days later. Ben read the end of the letter first, where the twelve-week limit appeared, then went back to the beginning with Nora beside him.
The access fund would cover a weekly lesson with Judith and practice-room time every weekend. The school’s two aftercare afternoons would give Nora three additional chances to use a piano between lessons. Anything beyond the trial would require another funding decision.
Ben copied the hours onto a calendar.
“Curtis says he can trade his Tuesday shifts for a while,” he said. “Saturday we’ll use the bus if the car’s still practicing its steam-engine routine.”
Nora watched him draw a box around the lesson time.
“That means less overtime.”
“We’ll have to work around it.”
“How much less?”
He put the pen down. “Let me do the figuring before you do the worrying.”
At indoor recess, Audrey brought her sonata score to the empty seat beside Nora. She opened it to the troublesome transition and tapped the F-sharp.
“I checked. That was missing.”
Nora kept her hands on her own desk.
Audrey looked at them. “I still hated seeing you do that while I was playing.”
“I thought I was keeping it where nobody could see.”
“Well, you weren’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
Audrey pressed the page flat. Several children were playing a board game nearby, arguing over whose turn had been skipped.
“I wasn’t thinking about your piece,” Nora said. “I was trying to find out what I still knew.”
Audrey studied the marked measure, then pushed the score a little closer.
“Could you listen to this part? I think my left hand keeps getting ahead.”
“You want me to tell you?”
“Now I do.”
Nora shifted her chair so they could both see the page.
Judith’s first proper lesson began with scales. After them came a study that made Nora’s weaker fingers seem even weaker, followed by sight-reading pages she would never have chosen for herself.
With ten minutes left, Judith finally opened the nocturne.
“We can keep your mother’s fingering through this section,” she said. “After that, you’ll need a solution that fits your hand.”
She held her own hand over the next chord. The brace stopped her thumb from opening far enough, so she indicated the reach rather than playing it.
Nora tried one arrangement and felt her wrist twist. Another got her to the chord but left no finger ready for what followed. On the third attempt, she made the change slowly without pulling against her wrist.
Judith asked her to repeat it. This time the passage joined up, awkwardly but without a stop.
The teacher laid her pencil across Nora’s palm.
“Put that one in the score…”
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