Part 7
For a few seconds, the room remained quiet. Nora let her hands rest in her lap instead of reaching immediately for the score.
Then the clapping began, warm and steady. Judith stayed seated as she applauded. Dr. Whitcomb smiled toward the stage. Ben took a little longer than the people around him to bring his hands together.
Nora stood and bowed once.
Audrey caught up with her behind the curtain.
“I heard that note.”
“So did I.”
“Your face didn’t even change.”
“I saved it for later.”
Audrey laughed and gave her a quick hug. Mateo held out his fist, and Nora touched it with her own before he went to find the refreshments.
Judith waited until the children had cleared the narrow space beside the curtain.
“Less pedal on page two next time,” she said. “But your ending held together better than it did Tuesday.”
Nora grinned. “Thanks.”
Ben stood behind the teacher with his program folded to a narrow strip. When Judith moved away, he opened it and looked at the line with Nora’s name.
“I got to hear everything after her writing stopped.”
Nora noticed that one of his cuffs was fastened crookedly. She touched the loose edge with a finger.
“Did it hurt?”
“Yes,” he said.
She leaned against him. He put his arms around her, shifting one hand so he wouldn’t bend the score she was holding between them. Nora rested her cheek against his shirt, and neither of them tried to speak for Mara.
The loan piano came in a center van in September. Its case had a long scrape on one side, and its original stand was gone. Ben carried it upstairs with the driver, then measured the space along the apartment wall.
The fall renewal letter lay on the kitchen table. Nora had completed the trial and kept her practice commitments after the missed lesson, which qualified her for the instrument loan as well as the extended placement. The funding covered the semester; the next renewal would still depend on available money.
Ben built a stand from discarded steel shelving at the warehouse. He fitted rubber pads beneath the feet and checked every corner against the uneven apartment floor.
When Nora tried the lower notes, the left speaker crackled.
Ben reached for a screwdriver, then read the technician’s repair tag tied to the cord. It asked that the case remain closed until the center could service it.
“Plenty of notes still work,” Nora told him.
He rolled the screwdriver between his palms for a moment before returning it to the drawer.
The paper keyboard went inside the bench. Nora brought it out now and then to mend a seam or smooth the worn places where her fingers had softened the blue ink. She didn’t frame it, and when visitors came, it stayed put.
Every weekend, she used the piano’s speakers until noon. After that she plugged in headphones for the neighbor downstairs.
One morning, while Ben made pancakes, Nora opened the nocturne to the page with Mara’s last markings. Below them, her own numbers continued through the music. The earliest were dark enough to dent the paper; the later ones took a lighter touch.
She erased a fingering that no longer suited her, wrote another, and tested the measure.
A little vibration came from the left speaker as she held the chord. At the stove, Ben kept the spatula under a pancake without turning it. He waited until she lifted her foot.