I get on the train and do the thing I’d been trying not to do before today: I look him up on my phone.
I find an old YouTube video. Vladimir Horowitz sits beside him, his hands together, as if in church. A master class with Horowitz. That’s like having the pope watching to make sure you pray right. Horowitz’s eyes glimmer over his papal nose. Even then he must already have been very old.
Paul’s jacket doesn’t fit well, hiking up at the shoulders when he brings his hands far apart on the keys. Sandy hair, longer and more ruffled up back then. The same straight nose and sharp blue eyes hovering over the keyboard, as if it’s a map and he’s plotting a course over sea. It’s the third movement of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata. Adagio sostenuto. The one that sounds like a milky flood from some gushing star. The one Evelyn, my old teacher, said you shouldn’t attempt to play before you’ve reached thirty, or unless someone you love has died — which means maybe I could play it, though it didn’t sound as if she wanted me to.
I wonder how my mom will take this news about Paul. I didn’t think he’d agree to work with me, so hadn’t spent too much time thinking about her reaction before now.
The sky has become serious. Closer to home, every fourth house is a mirror image, colored like sand and dun. There are lawns like wall-to-wall carpet; windows alight with television screens, or dark with curtains drawn; and the sameness of every house, and every day.
By the time I kick the front door closed, all sense of elation has gone. The salty smell of fish sauce and softened onions floods the air, and the washing machine drones in the background. Mom’s home. I guess she didn’t go to prayer group tonight.
It’s dim in the hallway, tinged orange from the dusty chandelier high above. Must be a bulb out. There’s just enough light to see the statues standing at attention on the altar in the next room, greeting me with their carved holy smiles. My pencil-gray shadow lists on the wall while I shimmy out of my shoes and fling them toward the others that are piled like kindling against the wall.
The thud of my backpack on the floor echoes down the hall, and she calls at the sound. “Anak” — which means child, or daughter in my case — “come eat.”
It’s half a question, half a command. She sounds like she’s in a decent mood. I pad sock-footed over the double thickness of Oriental rug laid over carpet into the kitchen. She’s already in her light-purple house robe, scooping rice into a bowl for herself from our ancient rice cooker. “Did you eat yet?” With a flick of the spoon, a ball of rice drops into the bowl.
“No, I —”
“You should eat. And feed the dog. He’s hungry. Did you do your homework?”
She doesn’t actually require a response to questions. Sometimes she’ll even ask me about school on Saturdays. But you can easily divert her with a newspaper article about someone getting E. coli at the grocery store, or predatory ants, or other topics that suggest conspiracy or impending doom. She’s inclined to worry even when there’s nothing to worry about. She’ll cast about — How is school? How is Tash? — until she lands on something — Oh, she has a crush? Does he like her back? Once that’s settled, she relaxes, as if she now has a handle on the situation, which she doesn’t. Well, I hope she doesn’t get hurt. She’s such a nice girl.
I know it’s just her terse Asian style of parenting and has nothing to do with how much she loves me, but sometimes I wish she were a little bit more like the moms in television sitcoms — baking cookies and dressing up on Halloween. My mother would never dress up for Halloween.
“It’s Friday. I can do it tomorrow,” I finally answer.
The kitchen has the kind of light that hurts my eyes, hyper and worn, especially after the pillow-soft light in Paul’s practice room, and I feel like I shrivel down a size in the scalding light of our kitchen. Everything shrivels here.
Our dog, Dean, scratches at the sliding-glass door to the backyard — he always knows when I’m home — and I go to let him in, but Mom says, “After. We’re about to eat.” She shuts the lid of the rice cooker with a metallic clang and starts drawing up long, clear noodles out of a steaming pot on the stove. I study her profile, the intensity of her worry indicated by the depth of the lines in the corners of her eyes. She’s almost my height, and we have the same face, though her cheeks are flatter, her lips a little less full. Eyes like pancake syrup when they’re not tired, but she’s tired now.
I pull a bowl from the cupboard and stand beside her. “Mom. Guess what?” There’s nothing to do but just tell her, but I’m already tensing up for her predictable flip-out.
“What’s wrong?” The slippery noodles have formed a bridge between the lip of the pot and her bowl. She coaxes them toward her with her fork until they splash into the bowl, the drops darkening flecks on her house robe.
“Nothing, actually. Nothing’s wrong. It’s just, do you remember when I did that piano competition?”
“The one you didn’t tell me about until afterward?” A flat note of blame.
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
She sighs her frustration in response.
I smile, hoping to sway her mood to a more positive one. “I decided that maybe I could take it more seriously, so I looked around and found a new piano teacher. An important one. He’s like the best in the Bay Area?” My uncertainty turns the fact into a question. Her face snaps to me, her eyebrows raised. When she doesn’t say anything, I start to babble. “Really, really, absolutely the best. I got his name at the other competition in fact. From one of the judges? His name is Paul. He’s interesting. My audition was amazing. . . . My Bach was . . . it was like magic by the time he got through with it. I swear, I couldn’t believe it was me.”
I can’t help smiling for real now, and she smiles, finally, tentatively. She puts her hand on my arm. “Wow, Claire. That’s so . . . wow.” Then, her hand begins tightening on my arm. “I hope he doesn’t cost too much.” And before I have time to answer, she asks, “Where are the lessons? How often? Did he seem confident about you? How successful you could be?”
I pull away. “No,” I say, grabbing a fork from a drawer and slamming it shut with a hip. “He didn’t say.”
“Oh.”
I prod the pale mess inside the stew pot, fork in hand. This is why I hate telling her things. She wants everything to be safe and secure. For every story to be over. If it isn’t, it can’t be good.
I stab a drumstick, pull it out of the pot, stick it on top of the noodles, and douse it with black pepper. “Do you know how hard it is to be accepted? You have to audition for him.” I sidestep the trial period issue.
We sit down at the table, and she whispers a prayer. Hope for blessings, hope to be heard. “Where does he teach?” she finally asks, her tone dropping half an octave as she picks up her fork and spoon. Conversational. That’s good.
“At his house.”
“Where is that?”
“In the city.”
“What city?”
“San Francisco?”
“You went there by yourself?” Her accent gets stronger when she gets louder — the careful flat e’s, the sharp t’s.