The Lucy Variations

by Sara Zarr

  “Who?”

  Will gave her a half smile. “Dr. Jekyll? Mr. Hyde?”

  “Oh yeah. I always forget which is which.” She tilted her head, watching his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. You should just be yourself with me.”

  His smile went away, made his face serious. Then he sprang up off the bench and gathered his sheet music. “Now. Tell me what you decided about the showcase.”

  “I’m going to do it.”

  His face changed again, to satisfied. “Great. Let’s call Diane.”

  That night, before bed, Lucy knocked on Gus’s door. He’d completely, expertly ignored her at dinner, right down to asking her dad to pass the salt when Lucy’d just had it in her hand. GrandpaӀhand. Gr Beck, too, had not spoken to her or about her. Somehow it was even worse than when she’d quit.

  Now Gus di

  dn’t answer. “Come on, Gustav,” she said, pleading.

  Nothing.

  She lay down in the hall and put her lips as close to the crack between the door and the frame as she could. “Gus. I love you. Okay? You’re my brother, and I love you. I’m so proud of you. I’m so …” Proud didn’t even describe it. “I look up to you, actually. How hard you work and how you’re not scared of that. Hard work. You’re brave.”

  She waited, imagining that any second she’d see the shadows of his feet coming towards her head, and the door would open.

  She waited and waited.

  “And I want to be brave, too,” she finally said. “This is how I can do it. I don’t know how else, right now.” She waited a few minutes more. “And I’m sorry.”

  Then she gave up and went to bed.

  At school on Tuesday, Lucy passed Reyna in the halls twice, and twice Reyna looked the other way. Feeling bold, Lucy took her lunch to their usual table but wound up alone and reading a book until Carson came up and dropped his backpack onto one chair and sat in the other. “Reyna texted me to say don’t eat with you, so I thought I better come eat with you.”

  She absorbed the sting of Reyna doing that. Then, filled with appreciation for him, said, “Thank you. You are an awesome friend, Carson.”

  “It’s true. You should take advantage of me more.” He pointed a cautionary finger at her. “And not like that. I won’t stand for it.”

  “I’ll try to keep it clean.”

  “What. Is going on?” He wiggled his phone at her and made a show of turning it off. “Look. I’m even disconnecting myself from all my important business. So talk to me. I mean, I turn my back for one second, and everything falls apart.”

  There was no way Lucy could explain to Carson what her fight with Reyna had really been about. She closed her book. “You know how she gets in her divorce moods.”

  “Yyyyeah, but that’s old news, and we always deal with it.”

  “I guess I lost patience and said something mean.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I don’t remember specifically.” Like she’d ever forget.

  “Right,” Carson said.

  “But she said stuff, too.”

  “Bet you remember that. And then you kicked her out of some party? Some party I was not invited to, I might add?”

  The way he described the situation did make the whole thing sound kind of like Lucy’s fault. Maybe it had been. “You would have hated this party.”

  “Carson Lin hates no party. Anyway, if it was so terrible, why did you stay after Reyna left?”

  “I said you would hate it. Not that it was terrible.”

  He straightened in his chair. “I don’t want to take sides. You need րto make up, so I can feel normal again.”

  “Well, Carson,” she said affectionately, “it’s not about you.”

  He squinted at her. “Hm. If you say so.”

  “Speaking of you, let’s…speak of you. I only ever talk about myself lately. If I start doing what Reyna’s done, with the divorce, tell me.”

  “Um, you’ve been doing what Reyna’s done with the divorce.”

  “Oh. Ouch. Okay. The topic of Lucy is officially banned for the rest of lunch.”

  They talked about his week, his Thanksgiving, his plans for next summer. She listened, and he made her laugh, and she wished Reyna were there with them.

  On Wednesday Lucy swallowed her pride and sent one text to Reyna to test the waters.

  I think maybe possibly I could have handled things better. Hope everything is going ok for you.

  She never got a reply.

  Then it was time to put Reyna and Carson and Gus and everyone else out of her mind and start working with Will on her showcase piece. She focused on herself, and on the piece, and on Will.

  They were texting every day again. Usually they started with some thought or question about music and ended up on something else: school – Lucy’s experience and Will’s memories – or movies or books, or parents. Usually just…life. How it felt to be a person. How it felt to be them.

  Like: they discovered they were both scared of those music-festival cocktail parties, even though they could both fake small talk and turn on the charm pretty well. “I know it wasn’t a party party,” Lucy said, “but were you scared at my house that day we met?”

  “Yes! God, your grandfather and his twenty-thousand-dollar conductor’s baton.”

  “Seventeen thousand.”

  And: Will told her that Aruna had been his first serious girlfriend. He didn’t meet her until he was twenty-four, and that made Lucy feel better about being a late starter compared to Reyna.

  At the same time, she didn’t like to hear about Aruna. It hurt her in a pointless way, the kind of hurt she had no legitimate right to and that had no cure. It was easier to pretend that there was no Aruna. Lucy only texted or called when she knew more or less where Will was, and with whom. Never when he was at home.

  Every day that he came over to work with Gus, he stayed after, on his own time. Gus would leave the music room, and Lucy would go in. Gus wasn’t giving her the total silent treatment any more, but they hadn’t talked much, either. Grandpa Beck still wasn’t happy about the whole thing. He didn’t think Will should be working with Lucy under his roof, but her mom defended their right to do it.

  Will’s coaching of her piece – a reasonably uncomplicated Brahms sonata – was illuminating. He heard things she didn’t, and that taught her to hear things he didn’t, and together they found a shape and character to it that felt right, and exciting. She wasn’t crazy for the piece, but she liked it and did it well, and Will said it would fit nicely into the rest of the programme.

  They sat together on the bench a lot. He could have helped her from anywhere in the room, but they stayed close. Sometimes she feared she’d lose herself totally, and pull a Pier 39 right there at the piano, only worsۀno, onlye.

  She contained her energy, put it into the music.

  Each time he left, Lucy had some of this energy left over, and she didn’t know what to do with it other than play more. She worked on a couple of other pieces on her own – the Chopin she’d pulled out the day after Thanksgiving and a Philip Glass series of pieces, Metamorphosis I–V. Back in her previous career, there had always been something to prep for, a recital or competition or recording, and no time to work on whatever else she might have wanted to; it had felt like cheating.

  Now that she wasn’t keeping her playing a secret from her family, and no one was telling her what to do, she was a glutton. She binged on piano. She played every single thing that interested her, everything that

  crossed her mind to try. The Brahms would be fine; she didn’t need to work it to death.

  It was all for her.

  Except sometimes she thought about what Reyna said, about Lucy needing an audience. Maybe she did. Not an auditorium full of people. Just Will.

  Because every thought she had, everything she observed around her, every conversation, every experience, everything that made her laugh – she imagined telling him, or him watching. She wanted herself, the particular
way he saw her and the way she liked to be seen by him, reflected back, over and over.

  It was like there was this letter to him in her head that she was always writing and never getting to send.

  It reminded her of being a kid and making a new best friend, how the two of you made your own world with just that person, and never wanted to leave it.

  And though she’d never been in love, it reminded her of that, too.

  The weekend of the showcase, a climate of agitation took over the house. Lucy had never seen Grandpa Beck so uptight about a performance, especially one that wasn’t going to have winners and non-winners – also known as losers. At dinner on Friday night, he gave Gus the third degree about his piece, how many hours he’d practised that week, and even about his hair. “You’ll have it cut before Sunday.”

  Gus glanced at their mom. “I will?”

  “I actually think his hair is fine, Dad,” her mother said.

  “I find the curls insouciant.” Grandpa Beck’s fork clattered to his plate.

  Lucy pressed her lips together and looked at Gus, but he was refusing to look back. How could he not share a laugh with her? It was possibly the most ridiculous thing Grandpa Beck had ever said. She didn’t even know what it meant, which made it even funnier. Gus, stubborn, kept his eyes fixed on his food.

  “All right,” their father said. “A new topic, please.”

  No one asked how Lucy’s piece was coming. There’d been some kind of official or unofficial pact, apparently, to not talk about it in front of Gus or Grandpa Beck. Her mother or father or Martin asked her about it a couple of times when they were alone, but it was otherwise an impressive feat of group pretending.

  And, after a couple of weeks of feeling good and sure about what she was doing, nerves were creeping up. She’d had too much time on her hands since school went on break. On Saturday her own tension about playing and not wanting to have any awkward run-ins with the members of her family whoހ were angry led her to sneak around the house like a burglar, trying not to see anyone or let anyone see her. In the morning she went out shopping, in search of the perfect thing to wear at the showcase instead of the stiff dresses heaped in a pile in the back of her closet since the day she’d purged her wardrobe.

  At a consignment shop on Union, she found it: a simple vintage dress, cut in the style of the twenties. The colour was very close to the coral of the sweater she’d worn to Will’s party, with seed-bead detailing. Totally wrong for the time of year but exactly right for how Lucy wanted to feel while she played.

  The same shop had a basket of old bow ties on the counter. She couldn’t resist buying a kid-size one to give to Gus, for good luck. Of course, she had no idea how she’d give it to him if he continued to avoid her like the plague.

  That afternoon, Reyna called.

  Lucy didn’t answer. She was up in her room, stretched out on the floor with her phone next to her, trying to just breathe, in and out, and bring her anxiety under control. And if Reyna was calling to tell her what a shitty friend she was, she didn’t need to hear it now. She had enough of that going on in her own head.

  The phone rang again. It was Will.

  “Talk me down,” she said, by way of answering.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, just that I can’t breathe is all.” She rolled over onto her stomach.

  “Well, it so happens that I predicted you’d be having a little difficulty breathing. And what does Lucy like when she’s feeling that way? Coffee.”

  “Yes, she does.”

  “Let’s go get some. To talk through it and, mostly, to celebrate. That you’re really doing this. Which I know hasn’t been easy.”

  “You’d drive all the way here for coffee?” she asked, knowing he would.

  “I’m way ahead of you, Beck-Moreau. Already in the neighbourhood.”

  She sat up. “Christmas shopping?”

  “Uhh …” He did the chuckle she’d come to think of as his for-her laugh. “You know I haven’t seen you in two days?”

  She did know.

  “Meet me on the other side of Alta Plaza,” she said. Gus was hurt enough by all the time Will was spending with her at the piano. They didn’t need to rub their extra hanging out in his face.

  She crept down the stairs and slipped out the back door, closing it quietly behind her. She dashed across the street, up the stairs to the park, walked through it, and sat on a bench at the top of the stairs to wait for Will.

  The neighbourhood had gone nuts for Christmas wreaths and lights. She’d been so out of it lately, so wrapped up in her own life, that other than helping Martin with decorations on Thanksgiving weekend, she’d barely noticed the holiday happening all around her. Life, turning cold and bright in that Christmas way.

  She didn’t want to miss it. She didn’t want to miss anything, ever again.

  She’d be careful this time to not let music become more important than people, than sanity, than joy. Whatever had the potential to obscure life that way, to the point that her own grandfather would look her in the face and say her grandmother was fine when she wasn’t…

  Then Will was there, coming up the street. She loved the sight of him, his slightly awkward turned-out walk, the one that could help her see the chubby teenager evidence suggested was once him. The way he scrunched his hands down into his pockets.

  The way he smiled at her when she ran down the stairs to meet him.

  They had coffee over in the Haight, far away from places where she might run into people she knew. They talked about the Brahms piece for a little bit, and Lucy shared the thoughts she’d had while waiting.

  “Sometimes I think trying to be so good at something…like, maybe it isn’t the best thing for a musician, or probably any artist. When it takes over your life like that? I don’t want it to stop me from seeing,” she said. “You know? People or the world or whatever.”

  “Nothing will stop you from seeing, Lucy. The fact that you’re even aware of it being a danger, already at sixteen, is part of why you don’t need to worry about it.”

  “I do worry about it, though.” She sat back in her chair. “Look what happened with my grandma. What I missed. Why they lied.”

  “You all learned from it. You showed them and yourself where the priorities should have been.”

  She explored her thought some more. “Maayyybe,” she mused, “maybe for the first couple of years of college I’ll stay general. Undeclared. I want to have my eyes open to everything.”

  Will’s brow, above the frames of his glasses, furrowed. “Are you changing your mind about music school?”

  “No. I mean, you know, just thinking.” She shrugged, smiled, happy to be with him and happy to be drinking good coffee. She didn’t really want to be undeclared; music school was still it. It felt good, though, to be free. To give herself permission to not think about for ever. “I should probably get home,” she said, noticing the growing dark through the cafe window.

  Will turned in his chair to get his coat from the back of it. “I can see, a little, why this has driven your mom crazy.”

  Lucy laughed. “What?”

  “This. The waffling. One minute you love music, and the next you’re talking like you could do anything else, and meanwhile you have no clue how many people would cut off a limb to have what you do.”

  He was smiling. Sort of. But also, sort of, frustrated. With her. Like on the phone that day when he’d defended himself for not telling her, or Gus, about his “glory days”.

  She tried to make a joke. “That would be dumb. Cutting off a limb. Especially if the thing you wanted was to play an instrument.”

  They were both standing now, their coats on. He stepped close to her in the small coffee shop, and they were eye to eye. “Okay. It’s your life, Lucy. I know. Okay?”

  She wanted to touch his face. She had never wanted to touch anyone’s face before, hold it between her hands. Run her thumbs along the eye-socket bones, or whatever those were called,
feel the lips…

  “Don’t be mad at me,” she said, quiet so no one in the shop would hear.

  “I’m not.”

  “Promise?” Her eyes filled.

  He nodded. She didn’t believe him.

  She pitched herself forwards so that her forehead rested on his lapel. He patted her back a couple of times and then put his arms around her and held her close. “I’m not,” he whispered. “I’m not.”

  On the ride home she was a little weepy, brushing a tear away every few blocks. They didn’t talk. He stopped the car at the same side of the park where they’d met. The neighbourhood sparkled. “Lucy,” Will said, “it’s hard for me, I guess. Spending so much time with you, and Gus, how good you are, how much you are. And how much you have in front of you.”

  She remembered what he’d said that night in the car, on the way home from the party. About being an old guy who teaches. “You don’t like your life?” she asked him.

  He sighed and leaned his head back on the seat. “It’s not that I don’t like my life. It’s…You’ll understand when you’re my age. I know that all you want now is to not be sixteen. But it’s a great age, when you’re looking at it from the other side of thirty.”

  “You make yourself sound all old.”

  He was quiet.

  “You’re not,” she added.

  “You’ll see. Youth and beauty. When you’re getting older, when you know there’s no going back, something about it hurts.”

  They were both concentrating on the dashboard.

  “It hurts in the way an incredible composition or performance hurts,” he explained. “Do you know what I mean?”

  She remembered the drive to Half Moon Bay with Carson and Reyna. The dazzling ocean and the sense that she could explode out of her skin from the beauty of it all. “I think so.”

  “You’re beautiful, Lucy. Inside and out. And that hurts, too. It hurts more specifically. More personally.”

  Lucy’s hands were folded in her lap. She needed to wipe away more tears but was afraid to move them. They would go to Will’s arms, his face.