by Sarah Beard
I sat there, trying to figure out what he was saying. “Do I have what it takes?” I asked nervously.
“You have excellent technique. Your mother taught you well. I can help you with song choices. And let me tell you something, Aria.” He sat and laid his hand on my shoulder. “You have artistic power in those fingers of yours, and passion I haven’t heard since . . .” A small, thoughtful smile appeared on his lips. “Since your mother.”
A medley of joy and relief swelled in my chest, pushing tears to my eyes. “Thank you,” I whispered. “You don’t know how much those words mean to me.”
“I think I know,” he said with a wink and a little smile. He patted my hand and rose. “Listen—if you can commit to practicing five hours a day, then your chances of impressing the judges are good.”
He began gathering a stack of sheet music from the shelves on the wall, and I glanced up at Thomas. He was gazing at me thoughtfully, a sparkling reverence in his eyes. Nathaniel summoned me to the sofa, where we went over some pieces he wanted me to work on. When we finished, we discussed scholarship options, and then he walked us to the door.
“Oh,” I said as I stepped onto the porch. “How much are lessons?”
He folded his arms and gazed down at the porch, his brow furrowed in contemplation. After a moment he looked up at me and said quietly, “You can pay me, Aria, by giving this your all, by making something of the gift your mom passed on to you.”
I nodded, completely humbled by his generosity. “Thank you, Nathaniel. For being such a great friend to my mom, and a friend to me now.”
He patted my shoulder and smiled. “I’ll see you next week.”
~
On the way back to Woodland Park, I chattered to Thomas about the meeting with Nathaniel and my hopes for the future. After ten minutes or so, I realized I was the only one talking, and the only one smiling. He drove quietly, his eyes fixed on the road and his brow lowered as though weighed down by some perplexing matter. I watched him from the corner of my eye, wondering if he regretted offering his help and now felt burdened by his obligation.
“You don’t really have to let me practice at your house every day,” I said. “And you don’t have to drive me to my lessons or anything. There are a thousand other ways to get to Colorado Springs.”
He glanced at me. “I don’t mind at all. I’m glad I can help.”
I watched him and waited for the shadow to lift from his expression, but it clung to him like pine sap. “Is everything okay?” I asked. “You seem upset about something.”
“Can I ask you something?” he said, ignoring my question. “Has anyone asked you to home-coming?”
My heart tripped into a run. Was he asking me? “No, not yet,” I said, trying to suppress the bubbling excitement in my chest.
His jaw tightened. “Well, I’m sure someone will,” he said flatly, keeping his gaze on the road.
Confused, I asked, “Have you asked anyone yet?”
“No. Someone asked me though.”
It took me a minute to find my voice again. “I thought you didn’t date.”
“I don’t. It’s just that, well . . .” He shrugged. “It’s not technically a date. I mean, it’s a school function.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. I was taken off guard, like being shoved unexpectedly off a cliff. I didn’t want to ask who had asked him because I already knew, and because a lethal amount of jealousy would surface in my voice.
“Trisha cornered me,” he volunteered, and I felt the sharp rocks at the bottom of the cliff pierce through my heart. “She said you were going with Dirk, and asked if I wanted to go with her and maybe double with you and him.”
“What? Dirk? He hasn’t asked me, and I’m sure he won’t.” I clenched my jaw, anger tensing every muscle in my body. Why would Trisha say that? Was she really low enough to lie just to get a date with Thomas?
“I’m sure he will.” His hands tightened on the steering wheel, as though this bothered him.
“What makes you so sure?”
“Locker-room talk. That’s all I’ll say.”
“Good. Don’t say any more,” I said with a cringe. I smiled, trying to appear unaffected by this awful turn of events. “So . . . you’re going with Trisha,” I said cheerfully, though the words tasted bitter on my lips. “You’ll have the prettiest date at the dance.” My stomach recoiled as I visualized them together on the dance floor.
“The second prettiest,” he said, glancing at me. “Anyway, maybe we can double.”
I almost scoffed at the suggestion. Nothing could be more torturous than spending an evening watching my nemesis devour Thomas with her manicured tentacles and come-hither eyes. “Sure,” I said, “though I doubt Dirk will ask me.” In fact, I was counting on it.
I
Thomas turned out to be right about Dirk. At the pep rally on Friday, Dirk asked me to homecoming in a way that was impossible to refuse. He called me down to the court, and in front of the entire student body, he handed me a rose and recited some cheesy thing about how I was as beautiful as a freshly bloomed rose. I’d never been so embarrassed in my life, nor felt so utterly trapped. I wanted to say no, but with everyone leaning forward on their seats with gleeful anticipation on their faces, “yes” came out of my mouth. The crowd erupted in cheers as though I’d just accepted a marriage proposal, and as I looked into the bleachers at Thomas, his expression was somewhere between annoyed and sympathetic. Trisha sat next to him looking smug. I knew in that moment that homecoming would go down as the worst night of my adolescent life.
nine
These three measures should be forte,” Nathaniel said, pointing at the sheet music propped on his piano. “Now go back and play from measure twenty.”
I played it again, doing as he asked. He sat beside the piano, swaying his hand to the rhythm. “Perfect. Now, sometimes the inner voices get buried in broken octaves, but the goal is to uncover them and let them be heard.”
He played a passage to demonstrate, his long, lemur-like fingers striding across the keyboard effortlessly. I followed, trying to replicate the beautiful way he’d played. For an hour we went back and forth, him showing me different dynamics and phrasing, me trying to copy. It was a process I’d become accustomed to in the five weeks since our first meeting.
“You’re coming along wonderfully,” he said as I gathered my sheet music at the end of the lesson. “Next week we’ll choose the final pieces for your audition.”
“Do you think I have a shot?” I asked as he walked me to the door.
“Of course. But how close you get to the mark will depend on how much work you put in these next few months. If you’re as hard a worker as your mom, you’ll be spot on.” He swung open the door, and I glanced at the empty driveway. We’d ended a bit early, and Thomas wasn’t yet back from running errands for his dad.
I turned back to Nathaniel. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure thing.”
“You knew my mom pretty well, right?”
He nodded. “We actually met before Juilliard, at a federation competition.”
“What was she like? I mean, I know what she was like as a mother, but sometimes I wonder what she was like outside of that role. My dad doesn’t like to talk about her, so I was wondering if you could tell me what you remember about her.”
His brow creased thoughtfully, and after a long moment, he said, “She had two left feet. She was always tripping over things. But somehow when she got on the stage, she pulled off poise and elegance.” He smiled, as though reflecting on some specific memory. “She was stubborn, but deeply loyal—once she made up her heart about something, there was no distracting her from it. And intense—she always seemed to feel everything with about ten times the emotion as everyone else. Which could be good, such as when she was playing, and bad, because she often overreacted to things.
“She had incredible intuition. She seemed to always know what people were thinking and what they were goi
ng to do even before they did it. In fact, I think she knew your dad wouldn’t support your music the way she wanted after she died.”
“How do you know?”
He hesitated. “She came to see me, before she . . .” He trailed off, like the word was as hard for him to say as it was for me. But this time, I was the one to tackle it.
“Died,” I said quietly.
He gave me a sad smile and shook his head. “It had been years since I’d seen her, and she looked so different.” He released a disheartened sigh. “She was so thin and fragile-looking. It broke my heart to see her that way. She spent the entire time talking about you, about how much she loved you and how talented you were. She was worried that after she died, Jed wouldn’t foster your talent the way she wanted. She asked me to teach you and to help you get into Juilliard. And . . .”
“And what?” I prodded.
“I thought this was a little odd, but she asked me to keep an eye on you, to look out for you and make sure you were okay. I never understood why, of all people, she would ask me. I mean, you didn’t even know me. I suggested to her that she ask one of your grandparents or an aunt or something, but she insisted there was no one else. So I accepted the assignment.”
“You must have been a good friend to her.”
“Well, I wish I would have been a better friend.” He let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry to say that I let her down. I tried to come see you a few times over the years, but I was still traveling a lot, and your dad was a hard man to get around. He wouldn’t let me come near you or even talk to you on the phone.”
“I saw you. A few weeks ago, arguing with my dad in our driveway.”
He nodded. “I’d been feeling guilty about not fulfilling the promise I made to your mom, and I came to try to convince your dad to let me teach you. Of course, you saw how that turned out. But all these years, I’ve been hoping you’d remember the business card I gave you and that you’d come see me.” He smiled. “And here you are. I’m so glad you found me.”
“I am too,” I said.
~
The day I’d been dreading for weeks finally arrived, and on a Friday afternoon in mid-October, I lay on my back and slid under my bed. The underside of the box spring was open, and I wiggled a cardboard box from a hollow space between the wood slats. Then I slid back out and sat up, folding my legs beneath me.
With great reverence, I opened the box and lifted out Mom’s evening gown. I stood and held it up in front of a full-length mirror. It was pale periwinkle, with wide lace straps that hung just off the shoulders and a soft, rounded lacy neckline. A wide band of embroidered chiffon cinched the tiny waistline, and a fluttery, cascading swirl of chiffon and lace layered the floor-length skirt. It was ethereal, a timeless dress fit for a goddess. Mom had looked so beautiful in it with her long neck and slender frame as she performed Shostakovich with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic years ago. It had been her last concert and the only time I’d seen her perform onstage. My eight-year-old body had tingled with wonder and awe as I watched her, and as I looked around at the expressions in the audience, I knew they felt the same way. It was the first time in my life I really understood who my mother was. From that moment, I wanted to be like her. I wanted to be able to put my fingers on an instrument and make people feel whatever I wanted them to feel. Anger, passion, hope, serenity, love. There was power in music, and I wanted to be able to channel and manipulate it the way she did.
The dress was the one thing I’d snagged from the attic before Dad screwed the hatch shut after finding me there one too many times. I hadn’t intended on wearing it to homecoming, but after spending hours searching through a sea of sequined bodices and frilly skirts that belonged on Cinderella or Glinda the Good Witch, I realized all other dresses paled in comparison to this one. This was the only dress good enough for Thomas. I wasn’t going to homecoming with him, but this dress would make it impossible for him not to notice me.
Dad had gone deer hunting for a week, so I’d have plenty of time to put the dress back in its hiding place before he got home. I hung the dress on the back of the bathroom door as I showered, letting the steam unwrinkle it.
Still dripping wet after my shower, I heard the doorbell ring. Dirk couldn’t possibly already be here, so I threw on a bathrobe and went downstairs to look through the peephole. It was Vivian, holding a plate full of something. I cracked open the door.
“Hey, darlin’,” she said, “I brought you some macaroons.” She looked at the towel wrapped around my head. “You goin’ somewhere tonight?”
“Homecoming,” I said.
She gasped. “With Thomas?”
“No,” I said, and I could hear the disappointment in my own voice. “He’s going with someone else.”
“What? Who?”
“Trisha. She’s blonde and beautiful and has the body of a dancer.”
“Oh, honey, we’ve got some work to do.”
She handed me the macaroons and dashed away. “I’ll be right back!”
She was back before I could put the macaroons on the counter, bursting through the front door with an oversized purse. “Upstairs, darlin’. Now.”
After drying my hair and rolling it into huge rollers, she pulled out a massive case of makeup. “Lie on your bed,” she said.
“What?”
“Just do it. It’ll relax your face and get rid of that little crinkle between your brows.”
“I have a crinkle between my brows?”
“Not for long. Lie down, sweetheart.” I lay on the bed and she tucked a pillow under my neck to keep my head from crushing the rollers. She scooted my desk chair over and sat down. “Now, close your eyes, relax, and no talking.” I closed my eyes, and for the next twenty minutes I felt all kinds of textures on my skin. Sponges, brushes, pencils, Vivian’s fingertips. “Okay,” she finally said, “now for the hair.”
I sat on my desk chair, and Vivian took out the rollers. As she twisted my hair and pinned it loosely at the nape of my neck, I tried to do the same with my emotions. I mentally coiled and twined, pinned and tucked my feelings for Thomas. It was the only way I’d be able to keep myself from unraveling when I saw him with Trisha on the dance floor.
With my hair and makeup finished, Vivian went out and I slipped into the dress, zipped up the back, and turned to look in the full-length mirror. I gasped at the sight of myself. Vivian had done an amazing job, but it wasn’t just that.
I didn’t have a lot of vivid memories of Mom, but seeing her in this dress was one of them. And looking at my reflection, with my perfect makeup and my hair all done up, was like looking at her.
My hand came to my mouth and I inhaled deeply through my nose to stifle the emotion rising in my chest. Now more than ever, I missed her. An acute, piercing pain stabbed at my heart, and I wrapped my arms around myself, wishing she were the one filling the dress, not me. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I blinked them back, not wanting to mess up my makeup. Suddenly I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea to wear her dress. My feelings for Thomas had me feeling fragile enough. Did I really need to add another thing to be emotional about?
I backed up to the desk chair and sunk into it. “Mom,” I whispered, still trying to hold back tears, “I wish you were here.”
A car honking jarred me from my reverie, and when I looked out the window, I saw a shiny black Mustang parked in front of the house. I glanced at the clock—twenty to six. Was Dirk here already? Vivian burst into my room with offense written all over her face. “There had better be a rabid heifer in your driveway, because if it’s your date—”
“Unless heifers drive Mustangs, it is my date,” I said, slipping on my strappy ivory heels.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she said, waving her finger at me. “You’re not going anywhere until he comes to the door and knocks like a gentleman.” She sat me down on the bed and held my hand. “By the way,” she said, eyeing my dress, “you’re gonna knock every boy at that dance off their feet, including Thomas.”
Honk. Honk.
“Somebody needs to go smack that boy upside the head.”
“I should just go down. It’s not like I’m ever going to go out with him again.”
Honnnnnnnnnnnkkkkkk. Honk.
“Thanks, Vivian,” I said, giving her a hug, “for everything.”
We walked out of the house together, and she watched me walk to Dirk’s car. I pulled on the door handle, and it was locked.
I tapped on the window, and he reached over and unlocked the door. A draft of cologne assaulted me as I swung open the door, and I breathed in one last breath of fresh air before ducking into the car. I waved at Vivian, who was glowering at Dirk like he’d just insulted her banana-caramel pie.
“Sorry I didn’t come to the door,” he said. “We’re running late for dinner.”
“Where are we going?”
“Pikes, of course. But my dad wanted us to get there before the evening rush. It’s Friday night, you know.”
“We’re eating at work?”
“I told my Dad to save us the back booth. Is that okay?”
I shrugged. “Nothing tastes better than a free dinner.”
After he pulled onto the highway, he eyed me up and down and whistled. “By the way, you look smokin’.”
“Um, thanks.” I wrapped my arms around my waist and wished I’d brought a sweater. “So, weren’t we supposed to double with Thomas and Trisha?”
“Huh? Said who?” He snorted. “Like I would double with my ex.”
“Oh. I guess I misunderstood.”
We stopped at Pikes Pancake House, and as Dirk promised, we ushered ourselves to the back booth. Dirk had the Mountain Man Skillet, and I picked at a chicken salad. I tried to be somewhat attentive, but all I could think about was Thomas. Where had he taken Trisha for dinner? Had he really nixed his no-dating policy for her? I attempted repeatedly to distract myself through conversation with Dirk, but it was difficult when his eyes never left my dress, and all his responses sounded something like, “Is that lace?” as if he’d never seen lace before.