Consent

by Nancy Ohlin

  I try to collect my thoughts. What to do, what to do . . .

  “It would be great to work together,” he adds.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. It’s . . . um . . .” He stuffs his hands into his pockets. “It’s a rare thing to meet a pianist of your caliber, especially at the high school level.”

  “Um . . .” I’m so flustered by his remark that I can barely form an answer. Not the “pianist of your caliber” remark, but the “It would be great to work together” remark. What did he mean by that?

  “Can I see the score first?” I say, finally.

  His face lights up. “Of course! You can have my copy. And I’ll let Braden and Lianna know you’re tentatively on board.”

  “I’m not promising anything,” I say hastily. “Wait, did you say Braden?”

  “Yes. Braden Hunt. He’s an excellent cellist.”

  I frown. Braden. This could be awkward.

  I consider making up a quick excuse: I’m sorry, I totally forgot that I have this other thing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But Mr. Rossi is already reaching into his brown leather messenger bag and digging around for the score. “I jotted down my preferred fingering in the more virtuosic sections. But please feel free to substitute it with your own, especially since your hands are much smaller than mine.”

  My gaze falls on his hands. They’re wide and strong with long, slender fingers. He can probably do tenths and maybe even elevenths with complete ease.

  “Beatrice?”

  “I’m sorry—what?”

  “I said, if all goes well, the three of you would be closing the holiday concert with this piece.”

  “Yes, okay.”

  Working with Mr. Rossi. I wonder what I’m getting myself into.

  NINE

  I skip dinner at the Sorensons’ so I can go home and practice. I hate missing make-your-own-tacos night, and Plum was disappointed; she even tried to bribe me with the promise of mani-pedis and more Buffy. Mani-pedis are the one shallow, girly indulgence we both enjoy, and I have to admit that my nails always look amazing after she’s worked on them. But I can’t show up to the rehearsal tomorrow without at least running through the Rachmaninoff a couple of times. I don’t want to let Mr. Rossi down.

  When I walk through the front door, I hear the dishwasher whirring in the kitchen. The air smells like Murphy’s soap and tea tree oil. A moment later Hannah clunk-clunks down the stairs with the vacuum cleaner.

  “Well, hello there, young lady! You’re home early,” she calls out in a cheerful voice. Her long gray hair is tied back in a loose ponytail, and she wears a baggy NYU MOM T-shirt over her paint-splattered jeans.

  I’d forgotten that she’d be here today. “Hey, Hannah. How are you?”

  “Can’t complain. I stopped by Wegmans and picked up some groceries for the two of you. Cleaned out the refrigerator too. I found some takeout Thai that may have been in there since Christmas.”

  “Oh, wow. Sorry.”

  Hannah has been our housekeeper since forever. When I was little, I was really taken with the fact that Nancy Drew had a housekeeper named Hannah too—and also a lawyer father and no mother. That odd little intersection of our lives used to strike me as incredibly profound, especially since my set of Nancy Drews belonged to my mom. Her name is in all the inside covers, Natalia Levin, in super-curly cursive with hearts over the i’s. If she were anyone else, I would totally make fun of the tween princess handwriting.

  I sit down at the piano, set my backpack on the floor, and warm up with a couple of scales. Fortunately, it’s cool to play in front of Hannah. Cream Puff appears out of nowhere and propels herself onto my lap.

  “That kitty-cat tried to help me sweep the hallway. Is he a guest or permanent?” Hannah picks up a glass from the coffee table, sniffs, and makes a face.

  “She. I’m not sure. Permanent, I hope,” I reply.

  “Every stray in this town is onto you, missy. Soon they’ll all show up at the door expecting room and board.”

  “Dad would have a stroke.”

  “Your father likes cats more than you realize.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

  I feel Hannah giving me a look, but I don’t meet her eyes. I run through the rest of my scales and then my arpeggios. Finally, I’m ready to tackle the Rachmaninoff. Hannah has disappeared into the kitchen and is emptying the dishwasher with a lot of banging and clattering.

  I open Mr. Rossi’s score and set it down on the music rack. The piece is in the key of G minor, which means two default flats: B flat and E flat. Mozart used G minor to express his serious, tragic mode versus his light, cheery, skipping-through-a-field-of-daisies mode. Much of Verdi’s Requiem, which is epic and awesome, is in G minor.

  I leaf through the pages and pore over Mr. Rossi’s markings. His handwriting is small and precise and elegant, although in a few places he has written phrases like EMPHASIZE CHORD and EMOTIONAL LOW POINT in large, agitated capital letters, as though he was in the throes of some particularly manic practice session.

  I try some of his fingerings. My mind drifts, and I picture him sitting at his piano playing the same notes I am playing. Did he use a light touch here? A heavy touch there? Did he play this in high school too? When was that? And where?

  And just what did he mean, “emotional low point”? Was he going through something traumatic when he wrote that, like a depression or a breakup or a—

  Focus, I tell myself.

  I pick up a pencil and lightly cross out some notes I can’t reach. Because I have small hands, I have to cheat the original music, which means dropping or rolling notes as creatively and unobtrusively as possible.

  After I’m done marking up the score, I run through the piece very, very slowly from beginning to end. I want to get it just right before I play it for Mr. Rossi. At some point I’m vaguely aware of Hannah kissing the top of my head and saying, “I left you a lasagna on warm” . . . and Cream Puff jumping off my lap in search of dinner . . . and the room growing twilight-dark. I bend into the light of the gooseneck piano lamp and run through the piece a second time closer to tempo . . . then a third time just under tempo.

  Dad walks through the door right in the middle of the tempo rubato section.

  I stop abruptly and slap the score shut. It flops and slides down onto the keyboard. “I was just about to fix myself something to eat. Are you hungry?” I ask quickly.

  “I, um, already ate.” He looks confused, disoriented. “Bea?”

  “Yes. It’s me, Dad.”

  “You sounded just like—”

  He stops and shakes his head. He’s acting like I’m a ghost.

  “Hannah was here,” I rush on in a too-bright voice as I shove Mr. Rossi’s score into my backpack. “She said hi. She cleaned out the fridge. I think she left us a lasagna too. How is your trial going?”

  I wait with bated breath. Will Dad yell at me? Or will he simply fall into one of his impenetrable bad moods?

  He rubs the bridge of his nose, then gives me a tired smile. “Yeah, the trial is a pain in the you-know-what. The judge seems partial to the prosecution on this one. He keeps granting their motions, even though they’re completely without merit. I’m going to relax for a bit, and then I have to draft a brief. Do you need anything?”

  “I’m good.”

  “College applications going okay?”

  “Yup.” No.

  “And you’re taking your SATs when?”

  “First Saturday in October.” Which would have been a lie, except that Plum went ahead and registered me.

  “Great, great.”

  I head upstairs. Crisis averted. I decide I’ll change into my pj’s, grab a piece of lasagna after, and eat it at the breakfast bar while I do my English homework.

  My room is pitch-black. I snap on a light and see that Hannah has been here. My bed is made, and my teddy bear, Ludwig—short for Ludwig Van Bear-thoven—sits up perkily against freshly plumped pillows. My floor is clear of clothes and
the usual random clutter. My Nancy Drews are lined up just so on the ancient blue shelves with the faded sea horse appliqués on them.

  When I come back downstairs a few minutes later, Dad is sitting on the couch staring at CNN and cradling a scotch in his hands. There is just a wisp of amber left in the glass. A pretty blond journalist teleprompts about the situation in the Middle East. Cream Puff jumps up and rubs up against him, but he doesn’t seem to notice her.

  When he sucks down the rest of the scotch, I can almost see the muscles in his jaw grow soft.

  “God damn it,” I hear him mutter quietly.

  Crisis not averted after all.

  I tiptoe into the kitchen and close the door behind me.

  Maybe I should find somewhere else to start practicing.

  TEN

  Braden and Lianna are already in the music history room when I show up for our first rehearsal. They stand at the Steinway with their backs to me as they tune their instruments.

  Lianna tucks her violin under her chin and plays an A on the piano. When she follows with an A on her violin, it groans and modulates flat.

  “Awful,” she declares as she adjusts a string. “It’s all this rain and humidity.”

  “Tell me about it,” Braden agrees, gliding his bow across his cello. “I had a studio recital last weekend, and I couldn’t play two measures without falling out of pitch.”

  I enter the room and slide my backpack down my shoulder. They both turn.

  “Bea Kim!” Lianna smiles and waves her bow at me. “Long time no see, sweetie. Dane told us that you’d be joining our little group.”

  “Dane?”

  “That would be Mr. Rossi. Some of us are on a first-name basis,” Braden says, slanting a look at Lianna.

  “Oh!” So his first name is Dane.

  I’d forgotten how pretty Lianna is—like Audrey Hepburn with a super-tall ballerina’s body. Today she is retro-stylish in a pink sweater set, gray pencil skirt, and flats. Her only makeup is a streak of bright red lipstick, which pops against her pale white skin. She has a large purplish bruise on her neck, and then I remember: violin hickeys.

  Braden hasn’t changed much since the last time I saw him, which was earlier in the summer. He is still earnest-looking and just shy of hot, with his curly ginger hair and short rugby-player build. Although he can be very hot at times—say, when one happens to be drunk on a bottle of wine that one borrowed from a parent’s liquor cabinet. But I suppose Braden could say the same about me.

  I hope it’s not going to be uncomfortable, us playing together.

  “What happened to the science-nerd glasses?” Braden asks me casually.

  “Contacts.”

  “And your hair . . . you did something . . .”

  “It’s just longer. I’m too lazy to get it cut. Where’s Mr. Rossi?” I ask, glancing around.

  “Dane said that he’d be here in a few minutes and that we should get started,” Lianna volunteers.

  “Fine with me.” I pull Mr. Rossi’s score out of my backpack and sit down at the piano to warm up. What’s with this “Dane” business, anyway?

  “I didn’t know you played piano,” Braden says to me. “Mr. R said he just gave you your part yesterday. If you want, we could read through this at half tempo.”

  “I can do tempo,” I reply.

  Braden blinks. “Tempo, seriously?”

  “If I can’t keep up, I’ll drop the left hand or whatever,” I assure him.

  “Wow, okay. If you say so. You never mentioned you’re a musician.”

  “Yeah, well. It never came up.”

  He and Lianna finish tuning while I run through a bunch of scales. And then we’re ready to go. They scoot their folding chairs closer to me and set their scores on black metal stands that have the initials AJH written on them in silver marker. I arrange my score on the music rack, first bending and massaging the spine so the pages will be easy to turn.

  I place my hands on the keyboard and peer at Lianna. She positions her violin and bow and gives me a slight nod. Braden nods too.

  After a beat Braden inhales loudly and dips his head toward his bow arm. Then he begins to play. A measure later Lianna joins him. Their duet is a mere whisper because the music is marked ppp, for pianissimo possible, which means “softest possible.”

  I jump in at the fourth measure, at p, which is simply piano or “soft.” The shift from ppp to p is subtle and sublime, especially with the three voices weaving together. I’ve never played chamber music; I’ve never even performed in public, except for Plum a couple of times, and of course the various people who’ve overheard me practicing: Dad, Hannah, Mr. Rossi. Grandma Min, when she used to visit us from Tucson. I have to admit, it’s really amazing to create sound with other instruments.

  We play on. The initial rush of pleasure begins morphing into sheer hard work. I have to focus, really focus, to execute my part. Despite the hours of practice last night and my stellar sight-reading skills, the piece is still unfamiliar and not in my body yet. It will be, though, eventually. By the holiday concert I should be able to run the entire thing from muscle memory—if I stay in this group, that is.

  The piece accelerates. Halfway through the appassionato section, which is fast and frantic, my left hand shoots out to turn the page as my right hand flies across the keyboard. But someone beats me to the page-turning—Mr. Rossi. How long has he been standing there?

  I’m rattled but manage to play on. Mr. Rossi continues to page-turn for me. He knows the piece so well, and the rhythm of my playing so well, that he turns each page at the precise millisecond without waiting for my signal. It’s almost like we’re playing the piano part together.

  After the appassionato section comes the tempo rubato section, then the risoluto.

  As the piece reaches its climax, it swells and then settles. Slowly, gradually, the music trickles back down to p, then pp, then ppp.

  The violin and cello fade away, and the last two measures of the piece are mine alone: three G-minor chords, each more quiet than the last. With the final chord, I come down as lightly and tenderly as I can and then hold . . . and hold . . . and hold.

  When I finally let go, I can feel Mr. Rossi watching me as I sink my trembling hands onto my lap.

  Silence fills the room.

  We all glance up at Mr. Rossi. He is still watching me.

  “Well?” Lianna’s voice slices through the stillness.

  Mr. Rossi startles as though waking up from a trance. “What? Sorry. Yes, it’s a good beginning.”

  Lianna pouts. “A good beginning? That’s all?”

  “This is your first time together. Beatrice, I thought you didn’t know this piece.”

  “I didn’t. I learned it last night.”

  “Last night.” For a moment Mr. Rossi seems at a loss for words. Lianna whispers something to Braden.

  “Right, then. Why don’t we take it from the top?” Mr. Rossi finally manages.

  This time he pulls up a chair to the left of me, which is the usual protocol for a page-turner. When I play the opening octaves, he leans in so closely that I can feel his warm breath on my neck.

  My pulse quickening, I give in to the music.

  ELEVEN

  That night when I get home, I log on to my computer and find an e-mail from Mr. Rossi:

  I need to discuss an important music-related matter with you. We could meet tomorrow after school in my classroom, if you are free. I’ll also be at Café Tintoretto Saturday afternoon from around 4:00 to 6:00, if that’s more convenient. Just 30 minutes, I promise.

  Dane

  At the bottom of the message is his phone number.

  I read the e-mail again—twice, three times, four times. What does it mean?

  I go get my phone downstairs to call Plum. I need to talk to her immediately. An imaginary flirtation was one thing. But this . . .

  “How was your chamber rehearsal thingy?” she says as soon as she picks up. “Also, do you want to come over for di
nner? Like, seven? Daddy and I harvested all the basil from the garden because he said there might be a hard frost soon. We made pesto!”

  “Pesto sounds great, but I can’t. Listen, I . . . Mr. Rossi e-mailed me,” I blurt out.

  “About what?”

  “He says he wants to discuss something music-related with me. Here, listen.” I read the e-mail out loud.

  “Oooh, a date!” she shrieks when I’m finished.

  “Plum, it’s not a date.”

  “Definitely go with Saturday. Tell him tomorrow is out because, you know, your Dictator Mom best friend is forcing you to come over for an SAT prep session.”

  “Oh, yay.”

  “You’ll thank me when you get a perfect score. You’re going to say yes, right? To the café invite?”

  “Sure, I guess so.”

  “What are you going to wear?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “Wear your red top—you look really sexy in it.”

  “Plum!”

  I hear her cackling on the other end. Witch. I flop down on the living room couch and stare up at the ceiling. Cream Puff jumps onto my chest and digs in her claws.

  And then Plum is talking again, not about Mr. Rossi but the other thing. College.

  “We’re all set for Columbus Day weekend! I signed us up for a Harvard information session and tour on Saturday morning. They were literally the last slots available for the whole weekend! I also signed us up for Northeastern and Tufts. We have some time on Sunday and Monday if there are other colleges you want to visit, like maybe MIT and BU? Oh, and Aunt Jessika said we can stay with her and her girlfriend at their town house. Isn’t that great? They have four cats! Your dad said it was okay, right? And make sure you get out of your lesson with Scary Russian Lady. You and I have never been on a road trip together. It’s going to be so much fun. . . .”

  After rambling about college some more, Plum announces that she has to go. We blow kisses over the phone and hang up. I shake Cream Puff off my chest and head back upstairs to my computer.

  Sitting down at my desk, I try to compose a reply to Mr. Rossi. Do students and teachers hang out in cafés? I remember that Mr. Starmer used to hold “office hours” at The Grind on Friday afternoons. But he was really old and sort of a famous poet, so people expected him to act eccentric. I remember, too, seeing Mr. Jablonski and Annie Richmond there once, talking quietly in a corner. There was a rumor that they were having an affair, but nothing ever came of that, and Annie ended up dropping out of school because she got pregnant—not with Mr. Jablonski’s baby, but with some random JV basketball player’s baby.