The Lucy Variations

by Sara Zarr

  The world was full of beauty.

  She wanted to grab hold of it and take it all down into her bones. Yet always it seemed beyond her grasp. Sometimes only by a little, like now. The thinnest membrane.

  Usually, though, by miles.

  You couldn’t expect to be that kind of happy all the time. She knew that.

  But some

  times, you could. Sometimes, you should be allowed a tiny bit of joy that would stay with you for more than five minutes. That wasn’t too much to ask. To have a moment like this, and be able to hold on to it.

  To cross that membrane, and feel alive.

  Her legs: lead. She tried to run anyway, and it seemed like the hundredth time around the track, at least. Her body was huge and clumsy, and Mr. Charles appeared to be the coach, only he never looked up from his clipboard. Was she invisible? And, she realized, she had to pee. Now. She found a public bathroom, but the toilets in every stall were flooded or nasty, and none of the stall doors closed all the way. She would have to lean forwards and hold the door while squatting in filth.

  Someone was trying to get in, pushing at the door, pushing, saying her name, Lucy, Lucy, get out of there, Lucy …

  “Lucy?”

  She opened her eyes. Her father stood over the bed, jacket on.

  “Shit,” she muttered, wincing at the pressure in her bladder. “What time is it?”

  “Time to go.”

  “What day is it?”

  “Monday, chicken. Up, up, up. Allez.”

  She flung off the covers and raced to the bathroom.

  “Mom got tired of waiting, so she and Gus left.” They were in her dad’s little Audi, Lucy’s book bag crowding her legs, random papers spilling out of it. “I think you’re going to have a conversation with her when you get home today.”

  “I’m sure I am.”

  She was desperate to stop for coffee and figured her dad would probably go for it, but she could absolutely not turn up late to English again with a coffee cup in her hand.

  “Everything okay?” He nudged her knee with his forearm.

  He had a knack for asking that kind of question in moments with zero time for what would come after “no”, so she always found herself saying, as she did now, “Yeah.”

  They were sort of strangers lately. He rarely seemed to be around, even though he didn’t have what you’d call a job other than being Gus’s manager and also being on the board of a few of Grandpa Beck’s trusts. Anyway, how could she explain? She barely understood it herself. What if I want to play again? She imagined asking it. Of all the people in her house, her dad would be the easiest to say it to.

  “Anxiety dream,” she said. They were a block from Speare.

  “Ah. Test today?”

  She shook her head. “Just life, I guess.”

  “Life,” her dad repeated, stopping in front of the entrance. “That’ll do it.” He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek, his face rough. She caught a whiff of coffee on his breath; her senses perked up. Maybe she could squeeze in a CC’s run after English. “Apologize to your mom later, okay? About being late.”

  “Dad…”

  “Just do it.”

  She walked into English, and Mr. Charles, who stood at the front of the room with his back to the door, didn’t even turn around. “Is that Lucy?” he asked the class. The tone of his voice stopped her from going any further than the doorway.

  The class gave him a collective affirmation. Mary Auerbach had a look on her face that was possibly a smirk.

  He raised his hand and, still without turning, waved it. “Bye-bye.”

  Wait. What? Was he serious? He should look at her, at least. He should turn around and see her and…

  He couldn’t just kick her out of class.

  “I’m…sorry, I…”

  Mr. Charles lifted his hand again. “Nope.”

  Mary sniggered.

  Bitch. Lucy turned on her heels and pushed through the door, out into the hall, humiliated and furious. She knew it was her own fault for being late, but did he have to do that in front of the whole class? Especially to her. Who else brought him coffee and pumpkin bread and understood his lectures the way he ws t late, anted them to? No one, that’s who.

  She walked down the hall, wiping away a few embarrassed tears. She should probably go into the library or something and work on her paper or other homework. Except her stomach growled, and she needed caffeine, and most of all she wanted to get out of the building.

  Maybe Reyna would be willing to cut second period and go get breakfast. But in the middle of texting her, Lucy realized she didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  She left school, alone.

  Lucy thought she’d be safe sneaking in through the kitchen around ten thirty – her mom so rarely did anything in that part of the house unless Martin was off. But both she and Martin were there, in the middle of a conversation that stopped abruptly when she walked in. “Don’t try to tell me you’re sick,” she said. “Dad said you were fine.”

  “I’m…I was. I don’t feel very good now.” Truth. She’d stopped at a diner between school and home for coffee, eggs, bacon, but her stomach still ached every time she thought of Mr. Charles’s Nope.

  Her mother narrowed her eyes. Lucy readied herself to fabricate some additional symptoms. But then her mother came over to her and stood close, and tucked Lucy’s hair behind her left ear. “Well, my aunt Birgit passed away this morning. We just got the call.”

  “Oh.” Grandma Beck’s much older sister, who’d never left Germany. Lucy’d met her only once, years ago, while there on tour. “What happened?”

  “She was ninety-seven is what happened.” Her mother’s eyes met hers, and Lucy saw tears there, or at least some grief, and didn’t know why it should surprise her, but it did.

  “Sorry,” she said, and hugged her mother. Which felt unnatural. She held on an extra few seconds, anyway.

  Her mother stepped back and took a short, loud breath through her nose. “Grandpa and I are going to go to Dresden for the memorial. It’s been a long time since he went back home. And we’ll spread Grandma’s ashes.”

  Lucy caught Martin’s eye; he looked down. The ashes had been a question for months now. When Grandma had first died, there’d been talk of getting a niche at the columbarium or spreading them at sea. Then Grandpa didn’t want to discuss it and kept them in his room, and Lucy figured that was where they’d stay. “Why not here?” Lucy asked. She didn’t like the idea of her grandmother’s remains being that far away.

  “It’s where she was born. Where she and Grandpa met. She always wanted to go back after the reunification.”

  I don’t think this is how she pictured it. “Is Grandpa home?”

  “He’s probably in his study. Why?” Her mother sounded suspicious.

  “Why do you think? I want to talk to him.”

  “He’s tired, Lucy.”

  “I’m not going to ask him to go jogging.” She wanted to see about the ashes; maybe there was a way to be a part of the ceremony even if she couldn’t be there. Given how she hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye, he owed it to her.

  “All right, smarty. Then you’re getting in bed, since you’re sick enough to come home from school.”

  Her grandfather’s study used to be a bewed sinitching place for Lucy. Mysterious. The walls were lined with records, reel-to-reels, CDs, cassette tapes. Mostly records – vinyl, with fold-out covers and long sleeve notes. They had a smell. Mould, dust, a little bit of Pour Monsieur. He’d taught her how to use his turntable. He wasn’t stingy or controlling that way; he’d wanted her to know his collection as well as he did. Once upon a time.

  He wasn’t actually there at the moment. Maybe napping. Which was fine, because now that she’d reached the threshold of his space, she’d lost her nerve about Grandma. She went in, anyway, nudging the door open with her foot.

  It was dark. He kept the blinds closed to protect the recordings from sun and heat. She went to
his desk and clicked on the banker’s lamp; a pool of light warmed the room. The items on his desk never changed: a blotter, a stack of index cards, his pen set and stand, the framed picture of Grandma. Lucy sat in his chair and touched everything and neatened his stack of index cards.

  They were for his catalogue.

  Every single recording in the room had an index card that went with it, and written on that card was his critique, what Lucy thought of as his “I know better than anyone” notes.

  Sometimes his careful cursive covered the whole card. Sometimes there were just a few words, about the piece or the recording or the conductor or the soloist:

  A disappointment.

  First movement compelling but as a whole fails.

  Colourful and energetic in the scherzo, with an appropriately sorrowful adagio. Lovely acoustics for a live recording. I would have liked to have been there.

  Mediocrity wins again! Why does this man still have a career?

  She got up and scanned the shelves until she found the recording she was looking for, exactly where it should be, with the Early Romantics: Schubert and Schumann, Berlioz, Verdi. It was an LP of a lesser-known composer from that era, something Lucy’d discovered years ago during a time of insatiable longing to know everything her grandfather did. When she had cared about her music more than anything.

  It had its index card, too, of course. She slid the record out and put it on the turntable to play, easing the noise-cancelling headphones on, and stood there reading the album’s index card, almost from memory:

  Acceptable recording of a beautiful piece. The execution of the free cadenza is astute, and lives up to what a free cadenza should be. Jubilant. Vivid. It brings to mind Hannah. Whenever I listen, I find myself remembering our barefoot walks through the leaves in those first few autumns of our marriage, and how she would let her long hair fall down her back. I always wanted to reach out to touch it, and now I cannot remember if I did.

  How time betrays us.

  Lucy had often wondered why he left something so personal in a place he knew she’d find it. There were other personal notes and memories scattered throughout this collection, but none like this. The conclusion she’d come to was that this was how he expressed himself. Maybe the only way.

  If she didn’t know he’d notice, she’d steal the card.

  The music described on it now flowed into her ears, and her heart. She imagined her grandfather and grandmother, Hannah, walking barefoot through leaves. The cool crunch of it. Her grandmother’s dark hair, which Lucy had only known as bobbed and grey, cascading down her back and her grandfather extending a hand to touch iandt. t, and then changing his mind.

  And she wondered what his last line had meant, and if he’d ever told her grandmother how this music made him feel.

  That’s what music did. It made you feel. If you were Grandpa Beck, it allowed you to feel. Listening to it and reading his words and imagining how his memories felt to him let Lucy see him as more than the stony heart who’d sat in an audience while his wife died.

  Music, her grandfather always told her, was language. A special language, a gift from the Muses, something all people are born understanding but few people can thoroughly translate.

  She could, he’d told her.

  Listening and playing were two different things; each involved its own kind of translation. She listened now, and translated.

  The leaves. Their naked feet. Her grandmother’s freed hair. Her grandfather’s almost-touch.

  Yes, the world was beautiful.

  But music made that beauty personal.

  Nothing else could do that. Nothing.

  That afternoon she sneaked downstairs during Gus’s time with Will and lurked in the hall outside the piano room. She recognized the relentless, steady rhythms of Bach. Not her favourite. A ricercar she’d once done in competition herself.

  Then the playing stopped, and Will said, “Okay, think about the phrasing. Emphasize the strangeness of that diminished seventh, right?”

  More playing. Different. Better.

  “Great,” Will had said. “Did you hear that?”

  “Yeah.” Gus sounded excited, like he’d made a discovery. He played the section again.

  Lucy leaned against the wall and went through the piece in her head along with Gus, sense memory in her fingers, a snapshot of the music in her inner vision.

  “If you relate these two measures to these two measures,” Will said, stopping Gus again, “what have you got?”

  “Um…”

  “Hang on a sec, Gus. Keep working that phrase.”

  The door to the music room opened, and Will leaned out. He looked nice, in jeans and a navy-blue long-sleeved T-shirt. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you. I had this feeling someone was out here. Thought it might be your mom or grandpa. You know, spying.”

  Lucy stood up straight. “Sorry.” She peeked through the door; she could see a sliver of Gus from the back, working through the music with full concentration.

  “It’s fine. I’m happy to see you. You sort of disappeared after we talked last week.”

  “Been busy.”

  “Did you…want to come in?”

  She shook her head but didn’t move. He pulled the door most of the way closed behind him. “Are you okay?”

  “I came home early from school today. But I mean, yeah. I’m not sick.”

  There was a certain way that he studied her, like he had on the stairs, like he had the night they met, that made her feel like he was always willing to hear more of whatever she wanted to say.

  “I was in my grandpa’s study earlier,” she continued. “Listening to this piece, and…” She touched her hair, touched her face. Glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was coming. Listened to Gus diligently practising. “You know what you asked me? About if I ever want to play?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you think I actually could?”

  “Like would you be capable?” he asked, with a puzzled smile. “Of course. Eight months isn’t short, but it isn’t that long, either. Not for someone with your talent.”

  “No. As in…could I…” It was too hard to explain. “Never mind.”

  She started to turn.

  “You mean would you be allowed,” Will said, keeping his voice low. “After the way you quit.”

  Their eyes met. She waited for an answer.

  He smiled a little. “No one is going to arrest you.”

  Lucy put her hand on the wall, running it over the textured plaster. “I know,” she said, unsure of what she’d thought he could tell her. “Sorry. You’re busy.”

  “It’s okay. I mean I am, but, look, whatever you decide, will you do me a favour? If you need to talk about this stuff, if you want advice or an opinion or just an ear, think of me as a friend?”

  She let her arm fall to her side. “Really?”

  He nodded. “Really.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’d better go back in. Meanwhile you could try imagining what it would be like to play again, for yourself. No mom or grandpa. No competing. Forget all that stuff. Imagine: you.” He pointed. “Only you. And the music.”

  That night, Lucy did imagine it.

  She didn’t sleep, trying to picture things the way Will had said. Only her and the music. That took a lot of effort, but she got there, mentally, and it felt…

  Well, it felt painful. Because it seemed impossible.

  Where she stumbled w

  as the part where her grandfather would find out.

  I take this as your final decision, Lucy.

  It hadn’t been a question; she’d never had a chance to say whether it was or wasn’t.

  Never had the chance to be sure.

  When she’d arrived home from Prague, she had an opportunity to see her grandmother’s body before the cremation. The whole idea seemed gruesome. It wouldn’t change anything. Her father went, her grandfather, her mother, Martin. Lucy decided to stay home with Gus
, who hadn’t wanted to go either.

  “I saw her at the hospital,” he told Lucy, while they were down in the TV room, reclined in their favourite spots on the sofa, the TV on but muted. “Right after.”

  “What was the last thing she said to you?” Lucy asked.

  “I don’t remember.”

  She sat up. “What do you mean you don’t remember?”

  “Don’t yell at me. I don’t rememed si="25" aligber. She wasn’t talking that much. She was kind of spaced-out.”

  Lucy leaned back again. “Okay.”

  They stared at the silent TV. Then Gus said, “You really just walked off the stage?”

  “Yep.”

  “Did you feel…” He swirled his finger around near his temple. “Crazy? Like you didn’t know what you were doing?”

  “No. I knew.”

  “What did you—”

  “Gus, I don’t want to talk about it.” She stood and unmuted the television, then left to go up to her room.

  She found herself stopping in to look at the Hagspiel. She went right to the bench. The honey walnut of the piano begged to be touched, but she refused it.

  Carefully, so as not to make actual contact with the wood, she removed the various scores she’d been working on before leaving for Prague, separating them from Gus’s work and making a pile that she placed in the cabinet where they kept their music. She never wanted to see notes on a page again.

  She scanned the room for any possessions she might have left behind, and collected them: the special pillow she used for long practice sessions, the nail file on the side table next to the love seat, a stack of CDs.

  When sure she’d removed all evidence of herself, she walked out and closed the door behind her.

  In the car Tuesday morning – on time – she said, “I heard you working on the Bach yesterday, Gus. Sounded good.”

  “I started it with Temnikova. Like a month ago.”

  “You’re learning fast.”