“You must be Filipino, then.”
I shrug a yes. I don’t see why that matters.
“And you’d like to play more seriously?”
“Well, I’m no prodigy. This is just, you know, for school. Scholarships and stuff.” An answer grown-ups would understand.
“You know it isn’t easy, teaching people if they aren’t serious about it. It’s not just about playing fast or the right notes — you have to really want it in order to truly play well. To be an artist. And if you’re just doing everything you can to get into college — chess, horseback riding, volunteering with veterans — all that, then maybe this isn’t for you.” His eyes wrinkle behind his glasses as if to soften the criticism.
“I don’t do any of those things.”
“Sorry about that last bit. I didn’t mean to be harsh.”
“I do want this.”
“Why?”
I feel my burnt tongue. “Because playing feels beautiful.” The last word is hard to say. No one says that word at school, and I don’t say it to anyone. I can’t remember the last time I’ve said it, and here I am, saying it, all cheesy.
It’s true though. Songs don’t feel like they really die. They feel like they just go back where they came from. And when I play, it’s like I’m a part of that.
His eyes don’t leave mine. I get the sense he’s drinking me in, along with his tea. He must be thinking about walking me right out the door.
“How long have you been playing?”
“Since I was seven.”
“That’s a bit late. Have you been to competitions?”
“Mm-hm. I did one. The California Piano Teachers’ Association, South Bay.”
“How was it?”
“Okay, actually! I got third.” I look down. I personally think third is pretty good. But maybe he doesn’t think so.
“Nice!” His tone is warming again. “And what did you play?”
“Bach, Ravel, Beethoven.”
He gives a swift smile. “Let’s start with Bach, then. But first you should wash your hands.”
I look at them. They don’t look dirty. He raises an eyebrow.
“Everyone has to wash their hands before they play,” he says.
He gives me a clean hand towel to use. The soap is white, imprinted with flowers. Like out of Little House on the Prairie.
I scrub beneath my fingernails and paste my hair down with a wet hand. From the mirror, a grayed-out face peers back. I always look sick when it’s cold out. Squishy lips, big eyes behind big glasses. There’s nothing I can do about any of that right now though.
In the practice room, the bench gives an acquiescent creak beneath me as I move it back to the usual distance from the piano and run a few notes. Every piano has its eccentricities: some are like old, grave men; others are flashy. This one is warm and golden. Supple. I can sink my fingers deep into the bed of the keyboard, like I’m feeling for the underside of the note. The action is a little loose compared to the one at home, but it feels really well kept.
Here we go. The C-sharp Major, from Book II of The Well-Tempered.
Already my muscles are seizing up, and Paul looks like he wants me to get on with it, so before I lose all courage I take off at a speed I immediately know I can’t manage. The piece has a processional quality, a thrumming in the left hand. It should not be like a hummingbird. My hands are skittering over the chords, and it’s worse if I try to force myself to stop shaking. The fugue is rushed and it sounds like chattering chickens. I just keep speeding up and up and up.
“Hmm,” says Paul as the last note fades. I flinch.
“It wasn’t like that at competition.”
He moves to the other piano and plays a fragment of the top melody — no sheet music. His piano is slightly brighter than mine. “You aren’t opening it up, really. This,” he says, playing a note, “links to this. Pah-taah . . . You see? But make it rise.”
I risk a glance at him. No derision. Just focus.
He’s being kind.
I try again. “More . . . tenderness in the right hand. Let the touch be like it’s the only thing worth doing. . . .” He talks me through it, and the notes begin to flash like a cut jewel turning, the theme shifting, folding onto itself, like a choir of voices from the natural world, asking questions and answering them. We rip into the fugue and it starts to rock, every voice of the prelude in a frenzied weave. I get so excited, my fingers start to shake again.
“Better,” he says. “Though I don’t know if this is the right piece for you.”
We run through a bit of Beethoven, but not for long. He waves me off of it in a few measures.
“What do you think?” I ask.
“I know it’s difficult to play well in this kind of situation, at least the first time.” A bit of a smile appears, though his eyes stay cool. “We could . . . work together for a month. Maybe do a competition, a small one. See how you do. There are some technical things I think that you can work on, but that’s quite improvable. You sight-read well?”
“Yup! I mean yes,” I say as quietly as possible, tamping down my excitement — as if being too happy might make him change his mind.
“And you know my fees?”
I nod. One ten an hour, Andrew, his assistant, told me over the phone. Three times what we pay now. I have no idea how I’m going to ask my mom for the money.
“Okay. Well, then.”
I pack up. “Send me some recordings,” he says. “And I’d like you to get an exercise book. Czerny’s The School of Velocity. Practice it an hour a day, after your scales for speed and control.” He pokes the book of Mozart sonatas peeking out of my bag back down where it belongs. “You’ll have to work for it,” Paul says. “Everybody has to, of course, but . . . we’ll see. I think it will be evident very quickly if this is worth your while.” He puts his hand tightly on my shoulder and studies me, tilting his face in one direction. Nothing seems certain, and I’m sure it shows on my face. “Take heart. You have nice hands. That’s a good sign.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re articulate.”
Outside the house, I do a little victory dance, complete with whoops and screeches, and it scares the pigeons and I catch a bit of side-eye from a fellow pedestrian, but who cares? Who cares! I skip downhill. The houses, pastel bonbons each one, line my way. I pull my phone out of my backpack, slip my earbuds in, look for a song to match the hour, choose one with a bright tambourine. The blue sky swims in oops and bop-bops. The drums smack and shove, and the falsetto words are sighed all daydreamy.
He likes me. Well, okay, he liked me enough, and enough is a lot in my book. And if he likes me enough now, he could like me even more later. I can’t stop smiling at everything: the BLACK LIVES MATTER signs posted in windows and bicycles chained to parking meters, even the sidewalk cracks flowing by and a hipster girl, with a nose ring and her Afro-hawk dyed green and rolled-up jeans, who smiles back at me.
The song harmonizes and whispers that everything I did was right. I could be the girl in the song. The kind of girl a boy sings about. Who is vindicated. Who is right. With perfectly dirty hair. Who could say or do whatever she wanted, and people would still love her.