The Lucy Variations (6 page)

“Okay, Gus,” he said. “How about we improvise a little?”

He abandoned Gershwin and started to play a bass line that was not classical or jazz. More blues, or rock.

Gus kept his hands on his thighs. “I don’t…”

“Yes you do.” Will didn’t stop. “Go ahead.”

Lucy’s breath became shallow. She felt as nervous as if it were her sitting there instead of Gus, asked to be spontaneous in front of Grandpa, the king of calculation. And yet, the whole situation excited her. When was the last time she felt anything but some combination of boredom and suffocation here in the house? Will had energy. It filled the room.

“Come on, Gustav,” he said, “jump in.”

“Go ahead, kiddo,” her father said, tapping his toe and looking dangerously close to dancing.
“Ça passe ou ça casse! ”

Roughly: sink or swim. The French came out when he was tipsy.

Lucy’s leg twitched. She didn’t want this moment to wither away. She wanted it to bloom. And she wanted to hear her little brother blow their minds, like she knew he could. “Have some fun, Gus,” she urged.

He turned to her, and she grinned.
Show them
, she thought.

He did. At first his notes didn’t exactly go with what Will played, but then he picked it up. Lucy exhaled and leaned back against the love-seat cushion. If Will was the person he seemed to be, then things could be different for Gus. Maybe the chokehold could come off and—

“Lucy,” Will said, loud and sudden, startling her out of her thoughts. “Now you!” He gestured with his head for her to get up.

Me?

She wedged her hands under her thighs. Gus stopped playing and scooted off the bench to make room, his eyes alight. He actually thought she was going to do it.

“No, thank you,” she said, keeping her voice steady.

Will’s bass line continued.

Aruna nudged her. What right did Aruna have to
nudge
her? They’d just met. Lucy shook her head. “No.”
No, no, and hell no
.

She’d
just said
to Will in the parlour that she didn’t play any more. Not for “fun”. Not for “herself”. And most definitely not in front of
them
.

She got up, staying turned away from her grandfather. She imagined him saying,
Didn’t you hear that our Lucy is a quitter?

On her way out of the room, her father reached to gently hold her arm. “Stay, Luce.” She freed herself. Why couldn’t he be sweet to her like this without the help of excess wine?

Will stopped playing. Lucy’s mother said quietly, “Our guests.”

Lucy took a deep breath and turned to face the room. “I’m sorry. I don’t feel well. Goodnight.” It sounded so fake. She didn’t wait for them to reply.

In the hall she bumped into Martin, who’d been standing in the shadows and listening to the whole thing, she guessed. She brushed by him and climbed the two and a half flights of stairs to her room. And, too far away for them to hear, slammed her door.

“What made you choose Alice Munro?” Mr. Charles asked. They were having their one-on-one meeting about the semester project, Lucy in the chair next to him at his desk while the rest of the class met in their critique groups.

“Um.”
Because you like her?
“She seems direct. The people in the stories seem…real.”

Mr. Charles brightened. “I studied her in grad school, you know.”

“Oh. Really?”

“So I can point you to some good resources if you hit a wall. Otherwise I’ll stay out of it.” It wasn’t his best hair day. He’d either just gotten it cut or needed to. Lucy wanted to smooth down a piece of ashy blond that tweaked out to the side, over his ear. “Have you decided how you’ll choose which five stories to write about?” he asked. “Because you could do a broad selection spanning decades, or you could hone in on a particular collection or time period.”

Lucy studied his wrists, which were crossed and resting on his knee. She imagined him with a pen in one hand, reading her paper after she turned it in. She imagined him as a college student, hunched over a dorm desk, his dog at his feet. Then she pictured herself doing the same. Maybe English could be her new thing. What would it take for that to count with her mom? A PhD then tenure at an Ivy League school, probably. That should take only, what, twenty years?

“Well, I’ve started writing some stuff,” she said. “But I don’t totally have it narrowed down to five. What do you think?”

He answered, but Lucy didn’t have her usual intense ability to concentrate on him. She kept reliving the night before, that hopeful expression on Will’s face when he tried to get her to play. No one had mentioned it that morning, except Gus, who’d only said, “Will is neat,” over their hurried cereal.

Lucy’d made an
mm
noise through her food and avoided his eyes.

“…the scope of a career,” Mr. Charles was saying. “Taking, maybe, her first published story and comparing it to her most recent. That’s one way. Up to you.”

“I’ll think about it.”

He swivelled in his chair, away from her. “Whichever way you go, I’m sure you’ll do a good job.”

“You are?” Lucy asked, snapping her attention back to him.

“Of course,” he said. “You’re not worried, are you?”

“It’s my first really in-depth paper since coming back to school. In a normal class, I mean, without a tutor.”

“Lucy.” His eyes scrunched in this way he had of smiling without actually smiling. “You’re very bright. And your insights in class are always on point and thoughtful. I can’t wait to see what you do with Munro, and if you need help, I’m here for you.”

Her chest warmed, and she put Will and piano out of her mind. It could be a depressing thing to believe, at sixteen, that your best years were behind you. The promise Mr. Charles saw in her gave her a little hope.

“Thanks, Mr. Charles.”

“And thank
you
for the pumpkin bread on Friday. Sorry I ate it before giving you a chance to win your bet.”

She grinned at him. “I knew you would.”

By the next afternoon, her mood had continued to improve.

Mr. Charles loaned her a thick collection of Munro stories, and when she flipped through it in class she saw his pencilled notes and underlines and a couple of Post-its with comments specifically for her.

During PE she won a tennis game against Soon-Yi Pak. Soon-Yi totally smashed her in the overall match, but still. During the match she caught a glimpse of her own flexing quad as she waited for a serve, and felt powerful. A guy whose name she didn’t know said, “Nice play,” when he passed her in the hall.

Reyna didn’t bring up the divorce even once at lunch, and Carson ate with them, which was always fun.

And when she walked through the back door of her house, into the kitchen, the room was full of sunlight and Martin was pulling a tray of brownies out of the oven.

“You’re the perfect mother,” Lucy told Martin, and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“I try.” He set the brownies down and sniffed the tray, then poked at them warily with a spatula. “These are vegan. Special request from Gus.”

“Is he turning? Grandpa’s gonna love that.”

“I don’t think so. He just wants something to offer Will. To sort of celebrate his first lesson. You know your brother. Sweet.”

Lucy’s good vibe about the day dipped a little. She’d forgotten Will would be there; she didn’t want to run into him and have some awkward interaction about what happened Sunday night.

She poked a brownie. “They look pretty normal.”

“We’ll see.”

The music-room door had been left open a crack, and Lucy worried how she’d get by without being spotted. Then she noticed there was no sound or movement or any indication of live bodies inside. Maybe Will and Gus were in Grandpa Beck’s study, looking for a CD or album from his vast collection.

She got to the bottom of the stairs and heard Gus’s voice from above. “Lucy!” She looked up. He leaned over the second-floor railing, flushed. “Me and Will are playing Wii tennis. He’s really good.”

Tennis? He hadn’t been joking about video games. She put one foot on a step. “Better get back to it. You don’t want to get on his bad side on the first day.” She jogged up the stairs, Gus disappearing from her sight line for a second. When she got to the second-floor landing, Will had joined Gus at the rail.

“How about a match, Lucy? I see from the scoreboard you have a winning streak going.”

The expression on his face was nearly the same as when he’d asked her to play piano. It unnerved her, still. Any invitation from him might be dangerous. “It doesn’t take much to beat Gus.” She added, “Sorry, Gustav.”

“It’s okay. I know. But Will says I’ll get better.”

“I’m sure Grandpa will be thrilled to hear that. You can do a Wii demonstration at the winter showcase.” She shouldn’t have said that. She should have been happy the noose around her little brother’s life was loosening. “I’m kidding,” she added, trying to erase the creeping envy. Gus and Will would play video games, eat brownies, maybe bang out a few bars of “Chopsticks”. Nice for them.

“I break every forty-five minutes,” Will said. “It helps the brain. Science says so.”

“Okay, anyway, I have homework.” She headed up the next flight of stairs.

Gus called after her, “You always say that now.”

“Well, I always do now.”

“Lucy, wait.” Will’s voice was right behind her; he’d followed her up the stairs.

She turned and shifted her bag, swept hair out of her eyes.

He leaned over the rail and said to Gus, “You can head down now; be there in a minute.” Then to Lucy, “The other night. I’m sorry I put you on the spot. Aruna said—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I guess I assumed you still played at least a little.”

“I don’t. I told you.” She went up three more steps.

“Never?”

He was still on her heels. She spun and found him directly on the stair beneath her, which put them eye to eye. “Are you going to follow me all the way to my room?”

She felt like she could cry. The stupid smell of brownies, Gus looking happy, Will’s toast on Sunday night.
The wonder of beauty.
Gus and Will at the piano, creating joy.

All conspiring to remind her that she’d once loved all of this. With her whole heart.

Writing a boring English paper would never be a substitute.

Will put his hand on the railing. “Sorry. I only wanted to apologize.”

“I said don’t worry about it.”

He lifted his hand and held it in the air between them, his fingers shaping something, a word, maybe – something he wanted to say but couldn’t. She watched his hand, watched his mouth, waiting to see what would come out. While she waited she noticed: one ear appeared to be placed slightly lower on that side of his face. Crooked nose, crooked ears, the smaller eye.

“What?” she finally asked.

“You
never
play. You. Lucy Beck-Moreau. Never play.”

Her vision went watery. She shook her head. “Never.”

“That makes me sad.”

What could she say to that? It was a compliment and a judgement, and it made her sad, too. The tears were about to come, so she turned her back on him and got all the way up to the bottom of the attic stairs before he said more:

“Do you want to? Ever?”

She could laugh. She could tell him to leave her alone and be mad that he’d asked. Or stand there on the step and explain the complicated emotional mechanism by which the idea of playing again had become all wrapped up with giving in to her grandfather and missing her grandmother and betraying herself.

But.

What do you want, Lucy? What do
you
want?

She wiped off her face but didn’t look back at him. “I don’t know.”

Maybe. Maybe
.

The morning of her first performance in Prague, Lucy had woken up with a headache and a stiff neck and something weird in her lower back. Stress. Wincing, she got on the hotel-room floor and did the stretching and yoga moves Grace Chang taught her and deep breathing to get calm.

She was ready. She’d been working on the piece for more than three months; time enough to learn it, memorize it, and make it her own. But she rarely
felt
ready when the moment came.

The stretching helped, but she had trouble stilling her mind. She’d been in plenty of high-pressure situations before, and normally she could summon the combination of fierce determination and deep serenity that made her a winner. Even in the last year or so, when she wasn’t so much feeling the love, at go-time she could pull herself together and execute.

She tried meditating; that sometimes worked.

Think one word
.

The word she kept landing on:
win.

Which didn’t exactly help.

This particular competition seemed to mean even more to Grandpa Beck than usual. Maybe because Lucy’s mom had applied for it a bunch of times back when she’d tried to have the kind of career Lucy did. Maybe because he was getting older and would probably have to cut back on his travel before the next Prague came around. It wasn’t held every year.

She was getting less relaxed, not more.

Come on, Lucy, a word. A neutral word.

Table, banana, muffin…

Banana muffin.

She was hungry. She got up off the floor, rolled her neck again, did a few toe touches, and went out into the main part of the suite. Both her dad and grandfather were awake; Grandpa dressed and standing by the window, looking out onto the city. Her dad sat on the sofa where he’d slept, still in his white hotel robe. “Did you order breakfast?” she asked him.

“Not yet.”

She picked up the folder of hotel services and dropped herself down next to him to look at the menu. “Can I? Grandpa,” she said over her shoulder, “what do you want?”

He didn’t turn. To the window he said, “Nothing for me.”

Lucy raised her eyebrows at her dad. Grandpa Beck ate oatmeal and fruit every morning like it was a religious duty. But her dad didn’t look back at her. Lucy noticed his cell phone in his hand. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“There isn’t anything wrong,” Grandpa Beck answered. He finally came away from the window and stood in front of them. “I changed my mind. Order me some bacon and eggs, Lucy. Over
easy
. Make
sure
that is clear.”

“Stefan…” Lucy’s dad started.

“What’s going on? Is it Grandma?”

“Everything is fine,” her grandfather said.

“I want to talk to her.”

“She’s still resting.”

Lucy said to her father, “Just long enough to hear her voice.”

“Lucy.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “She can’t. She—”

“Talking requires too much breath,” Grandpa interjected. “We need to put her out of our minds for the day, Lucy. Focus on your performance. Get through this round. Tomorrow, we’ll see.”

“We’ll see what?”
Put Grandma out of our minds?
“She’ll be okay, right?” Lucy asked.

Sternly, Grandpa Beck said, “Of course.”

Lucy’s father got up off the sofa. “I’m taking my shower. Only coffee and toast for me, Lucy.”

She could win this, she realized, listening to the three competitors who went before her.

Well, maybe not the whole thing, but this round of it.

And she didn’t care.

After breakfast she’d gotten her dad to admit that Grandma Beck wasn’t doing quite as well as they’d said, that everything wasn’t “fine”. He claimed not to know the details, though, and repeated Grandpa’s advice to focus on her performance. Lucy did her best to put it all out of her mind and, after her shower, got her hair into a complicated updo and went to the concert hall early to warm up on one of the backstage pianos.

Her neck finally loosened, and her headache was mostly gone.

She sat with the other competitors in the front row, stage right. She’d be first up after the intermission.

When it came she stayed in her seat and used the time to think through her piece. Even though she didn’t care about winning, she definitely didn’t want to embarrass herself in front of all these people and possibly the Czech prime minister, who she heard often attended.

She was Lucy Beck-Moreau. She’d do this.

“Lucy.”

Upon hearing her father’s voice, she snapped out of her pre-playing trance, assuming he’d come down front to wish her luck. “Hey,” she said.

He crouched in front of her. “I have to tell you something. Because…I just have to. Grandpa thought we should wait until after, but it’s not right. I think you’d hate me.”

“It’s Grandma.”

“It got…there’s something called sepsis. The pneumonia is bacterial. It’s bad.” He put one hand on each of her knees. “It mostly happened while we were in-flight here. She’s been on a ventilator, and that’s why we couldn’t call her. She’s in the ICU.”

Lucy listened, trying to catch up. “Is she going to be okay?”

“Her kidneys have already shut down. Her liver is on its way out. And her heart.”

People had started to come back in to take their seats. Laughter. Conversation.

“She’s going to die,” Lucy said, because he wouldn’t. Her father leaned forwards, as if to hug her. She pushed him away. “No.”

“We were going to tell you today,
poulette
. Right after.”

“Why did you change your mind? Why did you change your mind right
now
?” Her shock was turning to panic, and she spoke in a shrieky whisper. “I’m supposed to go up there! Why didn’t you tell me last night? Or this morning? What am I supposed to do?”

“You don’t have to play.”

Now you tell me
, Lucy thought.
After all these years. Now you tell me I don’t have to.

Then Grandpa Beck was standing there, his eyes blazing. “Of course she has to play. Lucy, your grandmother would want you to.”

The girl who’d played, and not that well, right before intermission sat two chairs away and pretended not to be listening and looking. Others were starting to notice, too: the Beck-Moreaus clustered in an obviously unhappy conversation.

“Stefan,” her father said, “let’s—”

“Dad, it’s too late. I can’t just…I have to go up.”

“Good girl,” her grandfather said.

Good girl.
She heard the words, but the house lights went down, and so she didn’t have to see his face. He’d known that morning, when he said everything was fine. And he’d known the night before, when he said everything was fine.

One of the festival workers came out of the wings to remind the audience to silence their phones and that they weren’t allowed to take pictures or video. He said it in Czech, in English, in French, and in German.

He introduced Lucy.

Applause.

She stood. The dark blue dress her mother had helped her pick out felt stiff and too young, and she wished she’d worn something else.

Her body, now, operated on momentum.

Climb the stage stairs. Go to the piano. Sit on the bench; adjust the pedals. Because you’re on the programme.

Momentum.

Decisions made for her, performances planned a year in advance.

I don’t want to go
, she’d told her grandmother.

You have to
, her mother had said.

She’d been doing what she’d been expected to do all along – working hard, performing well, stretching herself, living up.

The audience quieted, getting out the last few coughs, holding their programmes still.

Lucy rested her hands in her lap and took deep breaths. All she had to do was play like she always did. Just get through it; then whether she made the next round or not she could gracefully bow out of the rest of the festival, citing a family emergency, and they would be on their way home. People would feel sorry for her and admire her dedication.

Lucy usually kept her eyes straight ahead when playing in public, but this time she turned and stretched until she spotted her grandfather, who always sat where he could see her hands. He nodded once. What kind of heart of stone did it take to sit there and not weep?

And what was she doing at this piano, in front of this audience?

Momentum.

Great-Uncle Kristoff bought a piano and died in the war.

And now she didn’t get to say goodbye to her grandmother.

She looked down at her hands on the keys, and they weren’t hers any more. What she did at the piano didn’t belong to her. It hadn’t for a long time. It didn’t make her feel connected to herself or her family or the audience or the universe. It used to. When had that stopped? Before this trip. Too long ago to remember.

She lifted her arms. She could play and avoid a scene, then deal with this in private twenty minutes from now. Not make waves.

Or.

She could make a wave. A big one.

The audience stirred, impatient.

And Lucy stood, scooting the piano bench back. She faced her grandfather and father for a moment so they could see her calm, her certainty. This wasn’t panic. Not stage fright. Or even shock about her grandma. Nothing but her own decision, her own will, carrying her into the dark wings of the stage. A cluster of festival workers stepped aside as she passed. One said, “Ms. Beck-Moreau? Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

She walked until she found a door and, with no idea where it led, opened it.

It took her straight out into an alleyway, the sky bright, the air with a foreign tang. She walked down the alley and out onto the streets of Prague and kept going, getting looks from people who must have wondered what she was doing in that dress, with her hair up and sprayed stiff, like an escapee from prom.

After a few blocks, she cried. For her grandmother and for herself.

Then she saw her surroundings. The city was a miracle of stone and arches, spires and water. Lucy took in the beauty and thought about all of the places around the world she’d been without really seeing them. There was never any time. What else had she been missing? Besides cities, besides school, besides her grandmother’s death? What else? What?

She didn’t have any money on her and didn’t know where she was going. Eventually she got completely lost, and her feet killed from walking all day in flimsy flats, and she found a cab to take her back to the hotel. The concierge covered the fare; he knew who she was.

After her father alternately hugged her in relief and yelled at her for scaring him, she’d had to face her grandfather. Whose expression was impassive when he said, “I take this as your final decision, Lucy. Do not come to me tomorrow and say that you’ve changed your mind.”

And that was the end of that.

Momentum: stopped.