The Lucy Variations (13 page)

“I’ve got clean-up,” Martin said, excusing himself to the kitchen.

Gus stopped in the hall and said, “I don’t want to play.”

He’d never said
that
before.

“Come on.” Lucy nudged his shoulder and immediately wanted to take it back. She’d never, ever cajoled him about piano.

“It’s my day off.”

Maybe now that Grandpa Beck and Mom were away, she was seeing the real Gus. Maybe he’d been faking his willingness all along.
Impossible
, she thought.
I’d
know. She looked to Will.

“Yes, it is your day off,” he said.

Lucy’s dad had already sunk into Grandpa Beck’s chair. “Do whatever you want, Gustav.”

“Can we play Wii tennis?” He had turned to ask it of Will, who groaned and patted his stomach. “No chance. How about something that doesn’t require me to move, like chess?”

Gus made a face. Lucy smiled. Maybe because of being around Abby for half a day, or maybe for other reasons, he was being a normal, annoying, ten-year-old boy, and she liked it. He asked their dad, “Can I go watch TV?”

“Of course.”

Aruna put her hand on Gus’s shoulder. “That sounds great, actually. Can I come?”

He grinned hugely, and they went off together, and that left Lucy and her dad and Will in the piano room, with no real reason to be there. “My grandma would like you,” she blurted out to Will, who sat on the love seat. “Don’t you think, Dad?”

“Oh yes, most certainly. And you,” he said, pointing at Will, “would fall madly in love with her. She was a charming woman. Lucy has that, Hannah’s charm.”

Lucy swayed a little when she turned to her dad. “I do?”

“I think what Lucy has is a need to sit down,” Will said.

He was right.

The piano bench didn’t look uncomfortable.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw her dad’s head resting on his chest, though he still had a tight grip on his wine glass. Will had gone to the bookshelf and studied it as if looking for something specific.

Lucy lowered herself onto the piano bench and touched her fingers to the keys. They were smooth and responsive. Inviting. Like they’d been waiting for her.

She closed her eyes.

The first thing that came out was a phrase from the ricercar Gus had been working on, the Bach. She fumbled it badly. Will was right – that diminished seventh was weird. Lucy closed her eyes and did it again, still missing about half the notes. Then again, at a more restrained pace. Searching for the shape of it, making the music.

Better.

Her fingers started to limber up, but what came out of the piano still lacked what you’d call artistry. She hadn’t expected to be
great.
It didn’t work that way. If you neglect your gifts, they shrivel up and die, and you don’t deserve them. At least, Grandpa Beck had said that once.

But as she played she knew: nothing had shrivelled up and died. It had only been resting.

Her fingers still had the gift of translation that Grandpa said they did.

Her heart still understood what the music wanted her to do.

Her blood: wine and warmth and life.

She gave up on the Bach when she couldn’t recall anything from the second half and moved on to Saint-Saëns’s
The Swan
. This one came easier, and her body moved in its old way, rocking forwards a bit with certain phrases, her arms light, like a dancer’s.

After that she went into a little Duke Ellington riff from a song she’d forgotten the name of.

Her father, suddenly right behind her, was singing a line from the song. And she remembered she wasn’t alone.

It was like being forced out of a good dream when someone snaps on a bright light.

She jerked her fingers away from the piano.

“No, no, keep playing,” her father said, leaning his weight on her shoulder. “Please.” Then he tried to put her hands back on the keys. A few ugly notes filled the room.

“Dad, don’t.” She stood up, too fast. The room spun, and her stomach turned; she sat back down and pulled the piano lid over the keyboard.
That looks like a good place to rest my head
, she thought, and did, its old wood cool against her skin.

What had she just done? Yes, she’d wanted to play again, but not like this, not so…exposed. It was supposed to be only her and the music.

Another hand touched her shoulder now, a lighter one.

“Are you okay?”

It was Will.

“Try sitting up, Lucy.” He eased her shoulders back. “Let’s walk around.”

His voice was so nice.

“I don’t want to walk around. It spins.”

“I know.”

With Will’s help she stood. After a woozy few seconds, she found her feet and walked across the room while he stayed right by her. “Where’s my dad?”

“Bathroom. I’m thinking he might be in there awhile.” He touched her arm. “Speaking of which, do we need to find you an empty bathroom? Sometimes it’s good to just, you know, hurl.”

She shook her head. Getting up had helped.

They walked around the room again, in a circle, and Lucy joked about it being like a Jane Austen novel; then Will said she seemed all right, and they could talk a little bit, if she wanted.

They sat on the love seat. Will took off his glasses and put them on top of his head. His wonky eye looked more normal without them. He smiled. “So. You’re full of surprises. How did that feel?”

Now she smiled. “Good.”

“I could tell.”

“You could?”

He nodded. “You’re rusty, of course. But for someone who hasn’t played in almost a year…”

“Eight months,” she corrected.

“But who’s counting?”

“Not me.”

“Really, Lucy, wow. The Saint-Saëns…you talked to that piece like it was an old friend.”

Remember that
, she thought.

Mr. Charles appreciating her classwork had been a nice substitute, but it was merely a shadow of what it felt like to be noticed for music.

She’d missed being heard. Known. By others. By herself.

She put her head in her hands, overwhelmed.

“Lucy?” Will asked. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. It’s…” She lifted her head. “I forgot. How it feels.”

“I know.”

“No. I mean to be me.”

He touched her shoulder, like he had at the piano. She let herself lean against him for just a few seconds. He smelled clean and good, and a little bit like pumpkin pie. When she straightened up, she said, “I can’t believe I did that in front of my dad.”

“He won’t remember much.”

“Yes, he will.”

She got a little spinny again and closed her eyes. “What now?”

“Let’s talk about it when you’re not about to fall over.”

Then they heard Gus and Aruna in the hall. Will stood and met Aruna at the doorway; they kissed. Aruna said, “We heard you playing a minute ago, babe. Sounded great.”

They’d thought it was Will. And smooth, instant, like it was the truth, he said, “Thanks. Just noodling.”

Lucy stared at the back of his head and thought:
He’s on my side
.

Waking up the next day was not pleasant.

Lucy had a flu-y, hot headache behind her eyes. Staying in bed didn’t feel good; neither did getting up. On her way to the bathroom, she nearly tripped over a lump on the floor. Gus.

“Ow,” he said, in a croaky morning voice. “You stepped on my leg.”

“Well, what is your leg doing there?” She gave him a gentle kick.

“You said I could sleep in your room.”

“I did?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm.”
She went to the bathroom, saw her empty retainer case, and realized she had no idea where the retainer was – not in her mouth, which tasted nasty. She brushed her teeth and tongue and wet a facecloth with cool water. Maybe she’d forgotten about Gus sleeping in her room, but she hadn’t forgotten about anything else. Not the playing, not Will, and not what her father had said to her when he’d finally emerged from the bathroom, pale and clammy-looking.

“You break my heart, you know.” And he’d made a motion with his hands, of snapping something in two.

Now she stretched out on the floor next to Gus and draped the cloth over her eyes, pressing down on it. His sleeping bag made swishing sounds as he rolled over onto his back. “Want to share my pillow?”

Lucy scooted closer; their heads touched. After a minute of silence, Gus said, “Don’t be one of those people who drinks.”

God, was I that bad?
She tried to make a joke. “Ever? The whole rest of my life?”

“Will doesn’t. You don’t have to. Not everyone has to.”

“It’s a holiday, Gus.”

“So?”

With the cloth still over her eyes, she felt around at her side until she found his hand through the sleeping bag. “You’re right. But Dad kind of made me; you saw.”

Gus wasn’t having it. Lucy heard and felt him sit up. She took the cloth off and looked at him, the sleeping bag bunched around his waist, his curls sticking up everywhere. “He can’t
make
you. Remember how you told me people can’t
make
you do stuff. Like they couldn’t
make
you keep playing. Like that.”

Even though he was using it against her, she was pleased to know that he remembered their conversation six months ago, when she’d felt it her sisterly duty to inform Gus that he had a choice about piano, too, always. “You’re right,” she repeated. “I chose to. And the way I feel now, I probably won’t choose to ever again.” She jostled his hand until he withdrew it from the sleeping bag and touched hers. “I’m sorry, Gustav. Forgive me?”

“Yeah.”

He took the cloth from her and arranged it back over her eyes.

Martin had made the kitchen spotless, like Thanksgiving had never happened. He sat at the island, writing – a letter it looked like – and Lucy greeted him with a wave before zeroing in on the coffee pot.

“I like having you here all the time,” she said, after she’d gotten her mugful. “You should just move in permanently. Mom and Dad never save me any coffee in the mornings.”

“
Mm
. How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“Really?” He put down his pen and watched her pour her cream.

As she put it back, she held the fridge door open and pointed into it. “You’re amazing, you know.” All the leftovers had been stored in square glass containers, labelled with a label maker, and arranged in rows and stacks. “Did you stay up all night doing this?”

“It’s past noon, hon. And don’t change the subject.”

“Where is everybody?” She’d fallen back asleep, hard, after her talk with Gus that morning. When she’d woken she was still on the floor, the facecloth by her ear, drool on the pillow, and no sign of Gus. “I feel fine. I mean, headache. But this coffee is unbelievably good.”

“Your dad took Gus to a movie. Some big superhero thing. Why don’t you sit down? I’ll make you a turkey sandwich.”

That sounded perfect. She finally felt like she could eat again, and eat a lot. “I can do it.”

“I can do it better, and as a bonus, not make a mess.”

She sat and watched him while she drank her coffee, and soon had a masterpiece of a sandwich in front of her: whole-grain bread, turkey, mayo, salt and pepper, and a thin layer of cranberry sauce. “Thank you.”

Martin got himself a slice of pecan pie and more coffee and sat back down. He folded his glasses, laid them on top of his writing materials, and stared at Lucy.

“What?” she asked, uneasy.

“I heard you last night,” he said. “At the piano.”

“That was Will,” she said reflexively.

Martin shook his head and laughed. “It was you, Lucy. You think I don’t know what you sound like, after hearing you play nearly all your life?”

She swallowed her bite of sandwich and took another one without tasting it. When she’d swallowed that, she said, “I felt…festive.”

“Oh, I see. A one-time Thanksgiving show, and then it’s
really
the end?”

Lucy folded down the corner of the paper towel Martin had given her to use as a napkin. Then folded again and again, until she had an accordion of folds in front of her. “Don’t tell them I played,” she said. “Mom or Grandpa. I don’t want anything to change.”

“You don’t? You’re completely content with things as they are?”

She pinched a little bread off her sandwich and put it in her mouth, though her appetite had retreated. “No. That’s not what I mean.”

“Your mom, even your grandpa, in his way, they want you to be happy.”

“No, they don’t,” she said sharply, certain.

“Lucy.”

“They want me to achieve something or at least not publicly embarrass them. My happiness is beside the point.” She got up with her plate and began to wrap the rest of her sandwich the way she knew he liked her to: tight, with the self-sealing plastic wrap.

“I know it feels that way,” he said. “You have to trust me. I’ve known them longer than you have.”

There wasn’t even a space in the fridge big enough for her sandwich half. “You’re not their daughter.” She felt helpless, lost. “Where should I put this?”

He came over to her, took the sandwich out of her hand, and made a perfect little place for it in one of the drawers.

“Please,” she said. She held on to his forearm, pleading, after he’d closed the fridge. “What happened last night, it was…” She searched for the word. “Private.”

“It’s hard for me to understand, Lucy.”

“You understood when I quit.”

“I understood your protest against what happened with your grandma. I didn’t think, all this time later, you’d still be protesting. You made your point, Lucy, very well. You don’t have to keep making it.”

“Grandpa wouldn’t—”

“Oh, stop with that,” Martin said. “The man isn’t God, even when he thinks he is. He doesn’t run your life, or your mom’s, nearly as much as the two of you tell yourselves he does.”

She let go of his arm.

“As a person whose major talents are cooking, cleaning, and organizing leftovers,” he continued, “I don’t know why someone who can make such beauty would run from that.”

She wanted to tell Martin that being on the other side of this thing, to be the one with the talent or the gift or whatever you wanted to call it, it wasn’t like he thought. There was this pressure, this expectation that somehow you owed it to the world to do something you weren’t sure you wanted to do, at least not in the way the world wanted you to do it.

But she knew that kind of talk only sounded ungrateful. “I
am
thinking of playing again,” she confessed. “Only thinking. And I don’t know how it will all work. So I don’t want to tell them yet. Or Gus, okay? Until I’m ready.”

A smile spread across Martin’s face.

“
Thinking
,” Lucy reiterated. “I want time. To sort it out.” Time, and help.

“Okay, Lucy. Our secret for now.” He held her shoulders and stepped back, looking proud. “Your grandma would approve.”

They were alone in the house, Martin and Lucy. She left the kitchen. Her sock feet led her to the practice room. The piano lid hadn’t been moved since she’d put it down the night before. Lifting it, Lucy drew a deep breath.

The night before, her playing, even in the moment of it, had the quality of a dream. Full of food and Beaujolais and the sense of freedom from her grandpa being half a world away, she’d been almost in a trance. Like it had happened underwater, the people and things around her muffled and distant.

This time there was no wine fuzzing the edges of the moment.

Instead, what coursed through her was a sense of familiarity, of home.

It made her lips curl into a smile.

This was for real.

The keys under her fingers and the bench she sat on had substance, resistance. She felt sharp and awake and conscious of herself moving across a threshold.

Okay, Kristoff. Here we go.
The memory of Grace was there, too, and the spirit of Temnikova, both insisting she properly warm up.

She ran some arpeggios. Her hands still had good stretch to them; she could span the intervals without too much fumbling. After a few minutes of concentration, she realized she’d become slumped and paused to straighten out her back and go at it again. Once she felt sufficiently warmed, she looked through Gus’s music and chose an unfamiliar Chopin waltz to try.

Her sight-reading hadn’t deteriorated. It did take a couple of measures for the head knowledge of what she was seeing on the page to travel down into her hands, but then the muscle memory kicked in, and the more she played the less she had to think.

And not thinking was…spectacular. She’d forgotten this part. How your brain stopped grabbing on to every thought that floated by, stopped gnawing on every bone your subconscious tossed at you.

When she finished the Chopin, she rolled her neck a few times and got up. She wanted to be out of there before Gus and her dad got back from the movie. She closed the lid again, put Gus’s music exactly as she’d found it, scooted the bench under the piano, and left, shutting the door behind her.

Lucy tried to put some time into her Alice Munro paper but felt highly in need of distraction. She texted Reyna.

Lucy:
How were 2nd & 3rd desserts?

Reyna:
awkward

Lucy:
Sorry. fwiw wine gods are punishing me w/massive headache. Sorry if my dad was embarrassing.

There was a long delay before Reyna’s answer came.

Reyna:
I know it’s not perfect but you have a really nice family. Gotta go.

She was upset, Lucy could tell. Reyna only said “gotta go” when she didn’t have to go but wanted to.

Lucy:
Call me if you need to talk

Reyna didn’t respond, and Lucy kept checking her phone just in case she wasn’t hearing it, until finally she silenced it and stuck it under one of the pillows on her bed so she could concentrate. Her head had begun to hurt again, worse than it had in the morning. That had been an “I need food and coffee” headache. This one was here to stay.

She googled some stuff about Munro, did a tiny bit of paraphrasing, and called it a day, homework-wise. She’d clean up the paper on Saturday and get it in good-enough shape for draft form, then do history reading on Sunday, and continue to neglect calculus for as long as possible.

When she closed up Munro, she retrieved her phone and, in the process, found her retainer, sticky and lint-covered. She set that aside and got on her unmade bed, shoving her feet under the blankets for warmth, and texted Will.

Hi. Talk now? Or later?

There was no reply and no reply and no reply. Didn’t anyone want to text her back today? She decided it was time to eat again. She took her phone with her, and on the way downstairs, a text did come in. It was Lucy’s mom.

Got your msg. Travel nightmares & much to do. G-pa worn out. Will call later.

It wasn’t exactly “Happy Thanksgiving to you, too”, but it was something.

She’d just come out of the kitchen with the leftover half of her sandwich and some pie when Gus and her dad finally got home. The sensitive brother who’d placed a cool cloth over her eyes that morning had been possessed by the annoying ten-year-old-boy Gus. Who she didn’t like as much as she had last night. He tried to re-enact a fight scene from the movie by pretending to roundhouse kick her in the side and karate chop her neck.

“Stop it.” She pushed him away, harder than she needed to. “You’re going to make me drop my pie.”

Her dad had his phone to his ear – listening to messages, it looked like. Gus still danced around her, quoting some dumb thing she could only assume was also from the movie.

“You should practise, Gus,” she said on her way up the first flight of stairs. She only meant it as a way to get him to leave her alone, but hearing herself made her wince. It was exactly what she told her mom she wouldn’t do. “Or not,” she said, and turned to look down at the landing where Gus stood, touching the banister and staring up at her.

“I will,” he said, defensive.

“Never mind, you don’t have to.”

“Lucy’s right.” Her dad pocketed his phone. “Try to get in an hour or so, yes? To stay on track. The showcase is—”

“—in three weeks,” Gus said. “I know.”

“Another day off won’t be the end of the world, Dad,” Lucy said. “Overpreparing is as bad as underpreparing.”