Mountain Solo

by Jeanette Ingold

  "You don't have to convince me of that," he says.

  "Of course, she's been playing a long time." Amy points to the photo on the refrigerator the one of me when I was a little kid. "Since then, right?"

  "Since then," I agree. "That was taken the Christmas I got my first violin."

  "Is it what you asked for?"

  "I don't remember" I tell her "I know I was happy to get it."

  Dad laughs. "No, you weren't, Tess. You wanted a drum."

  "No!" I protest. I know he's wrong because I can see so clearly how that long-ago day was. Mom's told me how my eyes grew big with wonder when I first saw the violin, and how I took it from its case and cradled it.

  I ask, "A drum?"

  "A drum," Dad answers. "A toy drum like one that a little friend of yours had."

  "And I didn't want the violin?"

  "Nope."

  Lenny, I suddenly remember That was the boy's name. His drum had one red rim and one blue.

  I look again at the photo on the refrigerator It's been there almost forever reminding me, as Mom says, how my violin and I were a match from the start. How the first note I bowed was perfect and how after hearing it I never wanted to do anything but play my violin.

  Amy asks Dad, "Was it Christmas Eve or Christmas morning when Tess got her violin? Because Mom and I open presents in the morning, but if you want to do Christmas Eve, that's okay."

  Meg tells her "I don't think we need to decide that now, with Christmas still half a year away."

  Dad says, "Anyway, we've always been a Christmas morning family, too. And nobody"—he gives Amy a fierce, teasing scowl that sets her giggling—"nobody goes in to see presents until everybody's ready."

  "But how does everybody know?" Amy asks.

  "Because I tell 'em!" Dad answers. "Right, Tess?"

  "Right!" I say. "Right," I repeat. "Right."

  Tessie

  Hey, sleepyhead!" Dad said. "Don't you want to see what Santa's brought?"

  Mom's voice came from die next room. "Stephen, it's hardly light out!"

  "Tessie couldn't sleep," Dad called back. He winked at me. "Could you?"

  "Did Santa come?" I asked. I scrambled up and tried to slip past the bathrobe he held out.

  "Not so fast, squirt," he said. "We have to wait for your mom, anyway. Put this on and then we'll see what kind of day we've got."

  He opened the curtains, and cold air blew in. A deer bounded away from a bird feeder and I wanted it to be a reindeer even though I knew it wasn't.

  "Is Santa back at the North Pole?" I asked.

  "I imagine so," Dad answered. Then we heard Mom coming down the hall. "It's time!"

  In the living room, Mom and Dad watched me while I hugged dolls, linked plastic building blocks, and twisted die dials on a toy stove that had tiny, real pans in its oven.

  Then I remembered the toy drum I'd asked Santa fon I'd told him I wanted one just like my friend Lenny had that you could beat and match with. "Santa forgot my drum," I said.

  "Maybe he brought you something better" Mom told me. "Look here."

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "A violin."

  "What does it do?"

  "It makes music."

  I looked for a way to turn it on. "How?"

  "Someone has to play it, of course. Pluck one of the strings."

  The violin didn't make music at all. It made a tiny sound like a little plicck that stopped almost as soon as it started.

  Wondering why she thought that was better than a drum, I went back to my toy stove.

  Dad said, "I told you so."

  "Tessie, wait," Mom said. "You don't understand." Pulling me to her, she put the violin against my neck. "Rest your chin here and hold it like this..."

  I didn't like how it felt. "I don't want to. It's pinching me."

  "Oh, for heaven's sake," Mom said, but she tucked up my bathrobe collar so it was between the violin and me. "There! Now don't let go." She reached around me and steadied my grip. "I'm going to pull the bow across the strings."

  That gave a better sound!

  Mom pushed the bow back.

  "I want to try," I said. "Just me."

  "All right." Mom set the bow in place. "Go ahead."

  I pulled the bow fast and made a scraping, growling noise like Dad's voice when he was sick. That was really better!

  "Listen!" I said, and I put the bow at the starting place and made almost the same sound again. I did it over and over pulling the bow faster and faster until it skidded away with a squeal like a yowling cat. "Lenny can't do that!"

  Dad laughed, but Mom said, "Stop, Tessie. A violin is not a toy." She changed how I was holding the bow. "This time see how gentle you can be."

  I tried my best, pulling the bow as lightly as I could. And for an instant, between a scratchy start and a scritchy end, the violin made a pretty sound.

  "Oh!" I said, staring down the length of it. "Ooooh."

  DAD GOT HIS camera and took pictures before we even ate breakfast. And a few days later Mom showed me one of me. She got a pen and wrote something across the bottom.

  "What are you writing?" I asked.

  Mom answered, "'Tessie, three years old, with her first violin.'"

  "Three-and-a-half" I said.

  "Almost," she said, but she didn't change what she wrote.

  "Can I have the picture?"

  "Let's put it on the refrigerator," she said, and that's where it went.

  C," I said. It was a Saturday afternoon, too cold to play outside, but Mom had made me an indoor game.

  She nodded. "Very good. Now find me a B."

  The white cards spread out on the table each showed a note on the five lines that meant music. Unsure, I picked one up.

  "Close, but that's an A," my mother said. "Remember? A is in a space, and B is on that middle line right above it."

  I frowned, wishing it wasn't so hard. And then one right after another I spotted two cards with the B note. "B, B," I said. "B, B, B. Now can we make cookies?"

  "I promised, didn't I? But while I get out the baking things, you might try to find that B on your violin."

  "I can," I told her "Do you think I can?"

  Mom said, "I think you're the smartest going-on four-year-old girl in the world, and if you want to play a B note, you will."

  Dad came into the room, pulling on his jacket. He said, "And I think this little girl can do anything else she sets her mind to, too."

  "Do you really have to go to the clinic?" Mom asked him. "It's Saturday, and you spent the morning there."

  "I'll make it fast—just check on a coyote pup that Fish and Wildlife brought in yesterday. Want to go with me, Tessie? It's a cute little guy with fuzzy ears and big amber eyes."

  I looked at my mother.

  She said, "Only cookie bakers get to sample cookie dough. Stephen, really, Tessie has things she wants to do here."

  "Tessie?" he asked.

  "Can I see the pup tomorrow?"

  "Sure." He sounded cheerful, but he looked disappointed.

  "I'd like to see it," I told him.

  "I know, squirt. Now make those cookies good, because I'm going to eat a dozen of them when I come home."

  Later once the cookies were cooling on a rack, Mom sat down at the piano and I went back to my violin. Over and over I practiced a scale that began with deep notes played on the bottom string and climbed all the way to high notes played way over on the other side. My mom had taught me how.

  I watched my fingers as I tried to match my violin's sounds to the piano's. My fingers didn't always land right the first time, but I never ever foiled to wiggle them into place.

  "You've got a good ear Tessie," Mom said. "You got it from me."

  Mostly I just went up the scale and back down, but sometimes I said, "Wait!" And then I worked on just one note, playing it until I heard a sound that made me happy.

  ON ANOTHER DAY, summer now, I sat at a newspaper-covered table making a picture with finger
paints. I painted blue sky and tried to understand what my parents were talking about in the next room.

  Dad kept saying, "Don't rush things."

  "I'm not," Mom answered. "But it's wrong to hold Tessie back, and I can't teach her much more. Already she's figuring out things that are beyond me."

  "But formal lessons at four!"

  "Richard Dreyden won't push her Why, he won't even take her on unless she can show him she's ready."

  "So you've already talked to Drey?"

  "He's our friend, Stephen. I ran into him at the farmers market and he asked how she was doing I wouldn't have brought it up otherwise."

  "Yes, you would have."

  I jabbed a finger into green paint and began drawing a tree. Green was my favorite color I liked blue next best. My new favorite animal was a wildcat kitten that Dad was caring for at his clinic, but it probably would go back to the woods soon.

  Favorites were important to know because grown-ups were always asking about them. They laughed if you didn't have an answer Sometimes they laughed anyway and didn't tell you why your answer was funny.

  I dotted red apples on the tree and tried to remember if I knew Mr. Dreyden. I didn't think so.

  My father was still talking about him. He said, "I suppose it can't hurt to get Drey's opinion. But Sharon, if he says she's not ready, then that's that for now. Agreed?"

  "Agreed. But he won't."

  When my mother and I got to Mr. Dreyden's, he was working with a pupil in his studio at the back of his house. "They'll be finished soon," Mrs. Dreyden said, waving toward kitchen chairs. "You can keep me company while you wait."

  While she and my mom talked, I edged close to the studio door trying to make out what the voices inside were saying I wished my mom had told me what went on in a real music lesson. How would Mr. Dreyden decide if I was ready?

  Then Mrs. Dreyden said to me, "I hear you're getting pretty good on your violin. Is that true?"

  "I don't know," I told her. "I just like it."

  The voices in the studio stopped, and someone began playing violin music. I thought it sounded beautiful. Not perfect, exactly, like music on a CD, but beautiful, and it was there, just beyond a door "That's how I want to play," I said.

  "Then you'll have to work at it," Mrs. Dreyden told me. "That's one of my husband's best students."

  When Mom and Mrs. Dreyden stopped looking at me, I very quietly opened the heavy door.

  The studio was full of sunlight and music.

  "SO, TESSIE, you want to be a violinist?" Mr. Dreyden said.

  "Yes, please," I answered, taking my violin case from my mother and setting it on a sofa. I started to open it, but Mr. Dreyden waved a large hand. "Let's wait on that," he said. "First, I've got some games you might like." His big head and great, round shoulders made me think of a bear.

  "What games?" I asked.

  "Do you know how to play follow-the-leader?"

  I nodded.

  "Good! Then we'll start with that. I'll do something, and then you must try to do exactly the same thing" Mr. Dreyden clapped his hands together once, sharply. "Can you do that?"

  I clapped the same way.

  He clapped three times, and I did, also.

  "How about this rhythm?" He clapped five times and gave the claps a beat. Clap, clap, clap-clap, clap. I gave him the rhythm right back.

  "Not bad," he said. Then, grinning to show that he was going to tease me, he clapped out a much harder and much, much longer one.

  I grinned bade, because he couldn't trick me. I repeated it exactly, dap, for dap, for clap.

  "Well!" Mr. Dreyden said, raising his eyebrows. "Pretty nice. Are your feet as smart as your hands?" He went over to the piano. "I'm going to play something, and I want you to skip or march or do whatever the music makes you fed like doing."

  "Should I dance?"

  "If you want."

  But I thought dancing might seem babyish, so I skipped and walked in time to the beat.

  Mr. Dreyden finished with loud, cheerful sounds. "Can you sing, too? How about singing this?" His deep voice traveled up and down a five-step ladder as he sang, "Jaybird in a tree, fussing down at me." I sang it back to him in my high voice. "Right on pitch," he said. Then he took one of my hands and studied it, rubbing his thumb on my palm and curling and straightening my fingers. "Well," he said, "maybe now's the time to get out our violins."

  I took mine from its case, but when I held it out to my mother Mr. Dreyden took it instead. "I'll tune for you today, but after this you must do it yourself." He plucked the strings, turned a peg, and plucked some more before handing my violin back. "There," he said. "Now let's play follow-the-leader."

  Mr. Dreyden's violin looked like mine except it was larger and had a longer bow, and also it was a lighter color more yellow. He played a note on it, and I followed. Several notes and I matched those. Something longer like a song, and after two wrong starts, I played it, too. And then, even though he didn't ask me to, I played the best music I knew, which was some I'd made up from all my favorite sounds.

  After I was done, Mr. Dreyden didn't say anything for a long time. Then he told me, "Miss Tess, if you would like violin lessons, I would be happy to teach you."

  I asked, "Why did you call me Miss Tess?"

  "Because you look so serious. And because you've got a start on some pretty grown-up talent."

  WHEN MOM TOOK me for my weekly lessons, Mr. Dreyden would be waiting with a game or an idea for something fun. And pretty soon he gave me my own book of short songs, and we always began a new one the same way. He'd reach for his violin, and I'd cry, "No! Let me!"

  I'd figure out the new music by reading the notes and tapping time with my right foot. Mostly they were songs I knew anyway, like "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" No matter how easy, though, when I played to the end of a new one, Mr. Dreyden clasped his hands above his head and cried, "Bravo! Bravissimo!"

  Then one day he put a different book in front of me. "The melody line from a Strauss waltz," he said. "Think you can do it?"

  "Yes!"

  But I didn't know about waltzes, and after several tries I put my violin down. "There's something wrong with this music," I said.

  Mr. Dreyden shook his head. "What's wrong is that in your head you're trying to march instead of dance."

  "No, I'm not. I'm trying to play."

  Mom said, "Tessie, don't be silly. You know that a three-four time signature means you give a quarter note one beat and you count three beats to a measure. I've explained and—"

  Mr. Dreyden interrupted. "Why don't we show Tess?" He put on a CD. "Now this is a waltz!"

  In time to the music, he took a step with one foot, brought his other foot next to it, and then stepped in place. Then he repeated the steps, only moving to the other side. "One, two, three," he counted. He reminded me of a dancing bear in a picture book. "One, two, three. One, two, three."

  He bellowed, "Christine!" and when Mrs. Dreyden opened the studio door he said, "Come dance this with me!" He told Mom, "Mrs. Thaler, you dance with Tess."

  Soon we were all dancing around the studio, circling the piano and squeezing between the sofa and a table. "One, two, three. One, two, three..."

  After that, I didn't have any trouble playing waltzes.

  WITH MR. DREYDEN teaching me, I quickly got into harder music, where I had to do more than just watch the notes and count. Before I was out of kindergarten, I'd learned to check key signatures for flats and sharps, so that I'd play the notes right the first time.

  I started paying attention to the lines that Mr. Dreyden called dynamics. The long, widening wedges that meant get louder, and the wedges going in the other direction that meant softer now, go softer were like one of his games. Sometimes I tried to make a sound fade away so slowly that even Mr. Dreyden couldn't hear exactly when it disappeared.

  And even though I couldn't read all the words printed on my music, I learned to press down on my bow when Mr. Dreyden said forte! I played as qu
ietly as I could when he whispered pianissimo; I plucked my violin's strings when he said pizzicato; and at cantabile I tried to make my violin sing.

  If I wasn't sure I was doing something right, I'd look to see if the wrinkles on Mr. Dreyden's forehead were little or deep. Sometimes I'd find him watching me with a look like he had just received a wonderful, unexpected present.

  Just before my sixth birthday, Mom came home with a CD she'd bought. "Tessie, I've a treat for you," she said. "It's a Mozart symphony."

  At first I only half listened because I was busy putting together a puzzle. But then the sounds filled my head, crowding out the puzzle pieces, and I went to sit close to the music pouring out of the player.

  I shut my eyes and imagined that it was flying up into the air and filling the sky with beautiful colors. "When the music ended I started it over again, and this time I saw shapes of sound running across staffs of music; saw more notes played more ways than I had words for.

  I ran for paper and crayons, and I covered page after page with notes and lines and swirls, using every crayon I had because there were so many kinds of sounds.

  Mom looked over my shoulder "Whatever are you doing?"

  "Drawing the symphony," I said, "so that I can play it. Listen."

  I got my violin and found the first note, which I'd colored pale purple because it was a halting note, a note feeling its way. Then I played all my pages straight through. I played exciting runs and quiet, slow sections; played steep climbs and sad little Ms, although, of course, I couldn't make my violin sound like all the different instruments. It just sounded like itself.

  I played after I ran out of pages and kept playing until I lost my way. "I can't remember what's next," I said. "I need to hear it again."

  "Tessie, when did you learn that?" Mom asked in an odd voice.

  "Just now," I answered. "It's what you put on for me to listen to."