How could I possibly go play some dumb piano pieces for some middle-aged clods when my best friend Kathleen’s good-bye party was that night? How could I not have known Kathleen had a boyfriend? Or that she was moving?
I tried to picture Lucy’s party. All my old friends sitting around in pajamas, giggling, telling scary stories and…
What is the matter with me? I thought. That’s what we did in the sixth grade. Nobody is having slumber parties any more. This party will be…
…the kind of party where I usually sit on a piano bench. Where people drift up to the piano and ask for “our song.”
Our song. I wondered if Kathleen and her Billy had an “our song.” If they danced closer and looked at each other more lovingly when somebody like me played it.
One thing for sure. I didn’t have a song, unless it was “Work, Work, Work.”
I had one more class. I didn’t spend it thinking about music but I didn’t pay any attention to the teacher either. I sat there looking at the backs of people’s heads. At boys’ shoulders and girls’ fluffy hair. At oxford collars and pullover sweaters. I settled on one particular back view: a senior boy who played football and whose shoulders consequently took up a lot more room than anybody else’s.
Good grief, I thought. I’m behind in every class, I have a rough gig coming up, I’ve completely lost touch with every friend—and I’m sitting here rhapsodizing about shoulders.
The shoulders were very restless. They kept twitching and shifting, and twice fingers crept around awkwardly to scratch between them. I thought, if I were just one seat closer, I could scratch his back for him.
Just then he turned around. You know that awful moment when somebody you’ve been staring at catches you staring at him? You feel guilty, as if you’ve been cheating on a test or something, and you blush.
I thought, You really know you’re at the bottom when you’ve been caught daydreaming about scratching somebody’s shoulder blades. I comforted myself that at least I couldn’t be any worse off. Things could only get better. I even toyed for a moment with the idea of skipping my gig to go to Lucy’s party…but no, then things would get worse. Ralph would probably knife me or something.
Ralph. Now there was a male who spent plenty of time around me.
I considered the possibility of having a crush on Ralph. There were several drawbacks. First crushes should just spring themselves on you, not be carefully planned during English Literature. Second, Ralph was old. Third, I had just established that I was overdosing on music. If I hung around Ralph any more than I already did, I would drown in it.
So much for the only available man in my life.
I went back to studying shoulders.
4
THE PROBLEM IN PLAYING for people your parents’ age is that you make them feel old, which depresses them. Then they wish you weren’t there playing the piano after all, which rather dampens your performance. So for that Saturday’s dinner party, without the combo there to look old for me, I had to look old on my own.
I wore concert black: a shimmering, black knit shirt, a six-chain necklace of rhinestones, and long rhinestone earrings. A matching tight black skirt studded with sparkles and streaked with black satin ribbon. I braided my hair into a complex arrangement with several tiny black satin bows.
And I was terrific. (One thing we musicians are is confident. At least, I call it confidence. My father says it’s plain old conceit and I shouldn’t be so proud of myself.) Still, I was terrific and the whole evening went wonderfully. I even got kissed by two guests—older than my father—who told me I’d been a joy.
Good jobs stay with you. I always feel kind of like a helium balloon after a good gig: floating and warm and up at the ceiling. Bit by bit you sag and get tired and come down.
I got home, said good night to Daddy, who always groggily waits up for me, and was hanging up my dazzling skirt when something punctured my balloon so fast I hurt inside.
The following Saturday night was another gig, but there was a message on my bed, in Daddy’s handwriting, that it was cancelled; Ralph had phoned to say the club hadn’t sold enough tickets. That meant I was free next Saturday night. Free to do what other girls might be doing on a Saturday night.
And that particular Saturday night was the Winter Dance. They would crown the Snow Queen (although we have yet to have snow on the ground the night of the Winter Dance). When I’d walked past the gym between classes yesterday, the decorations had arrived. Somebody’s department-store-owner father had donated all the Christmas stars from his store: box after box of glittering, glistening, silvery-white stars to hang from the ceiling.
Everybody was going to the dance. Frannie, Lisa, Jan, Lucy, certainly Kathleen.
But not me.
Not Superwoman Brilliant Musician Conceited Booked-Up Alison.
On Saturday night I was going to be alone with nothing to do but maybe a few Algebra problems or a book report.
I stared at myself in the mirror.
The girl there looked rather elegant. Dramatic. Dark hair looped in intricate braids, her throat pale against a dark, soft neckline.
Nobody had asked that girl to the dance. Was it because any boy who knew Alison knew she would be busy? Or was it that no boy liked her enough to find out?
I stared at that Alison, and all of a sudden I wanted to peel her off. Scrub away the musician and the professional to find the plain, ordinary, high school girl who could relax and have fun and go out on dates.
And then I had the most horrible thought of all.
What if I gave up music only to find out that music was all I had? What if I quit the combo and backed off on all my jobs and had all the time in the world to spare and still nobody showed any interest in me?
I lay on the bed in the dark and told myself I would survive. All these troubles would build my character. Think how much character I would have by the time I got to college.
A few weeks later we played for the wedding of the decade (or so the newspapers called it). It was at Wind Gate Farms—the Fitzwilliam place. Fitzwilliam, as in ambassador to France, chairman of the board of I forget what conglomerate, and personal adviser to a former president of the United States.
Even Ralph said, “Wow.”
Lizzie said, “Charge them a bundle.”
I said, “Is the President coming?”
And Ralph said, “Guess what. There won’t be a rehearsal.”
At first I really didn’t believe him. Bridal parties love to rehearse. They do it for hours, until everybody but them is going insane. “We’ll have to wing it,” said Ralph. “Everybody stay cool.”
Wind Gate Farms sounded like a lot of cows in a pasture, but it wasn’t. Deep in a woods of rhododendron and hemlock and tame deer, it was almost a castle. Lizzie said it deserved a gothic novel of its very own. I caught a glimpse of a magnificent garden, covered with snow, with only the complex outlines of its English boxwood hedges visible. The enclosed courtyard would easily park a dozen cars, but the butler (I kid you not) asked us to park our rather disreputable-looking van behind the barn. Barn, they called it. To me it looked like a mini-mansion. Inside, I’ll have you know, were peacocks. In summer they normally strolled about the grounds.
Well, this is it, I thought. If I’m ever going to meet an exotic, romantic, exciting man, it’ll be here.
I pictured a tall, lean, dark, senator’s son. Or perhaps a blond, tanned, ambassador’s nephew. I decided he’d be about twenty. A college junior. He’d seen me at the piano, hear my beautiful music, and he’d be so entranced he’d find himself crossing the crowded room to meet me. I’d make room for him on the bench. We’d sit very close and he’d whisper in my ear.
Lisa, Jan, and Frannie would have been proud of me. Music was definitely not foremost in mind right then. I was too busy keeping a lookout for unattached, exotic young men.
We followed the butler down a vast hall (“Gallery,” the butler corrected me) into a marvelous, enormous room with statue
s in curved niches, a marble floor, and a few hundred metal folding chairs that must have been taken from some church basement somewhere. “Tacky,” Lizzie told the butler, and I cringed, but the butler just laughed and agreed.
I spotted two ushers right away. They were perfect: handsome, dark, lean, interesting-looking—and old. They looked practically as old as my father. “Phooey,” I said gloomily.
“How many guests will there be?” said Lizzie to the butler.
“Two hundred for the ceremony. Six hundred for the reception.”
Six hundred intimate friends, I thought. Who am I going to invite when I get married? I don’t even have one intimate friend!
The wedding photographer, wearing a white turtleneck and vivid red plaid trousers, was leaping about like a jack-in-the-box getting good flicks of the flowers. Lizzie and I skirted the makeshift altar, which turned out to be empty cardboard liquor boxes stacked up and draped with white velvet! “Tacky,” Lizzie and I said at the same time, and we giggled. “Look,” she said, “there’s another photographer. Doesn’t he look newspaper-y? I have never been to a wedding that’s been covered by a reporter. Maybe the president is coming.”
This other photographer was a kid about my own age, wearing a camera and a baggy old suit, carrying a notebook and pens. I didn’t think he looked newspaper-y. I thought he looked young.
He definitely did not look exotic.
I examined him carefully. He was rather good-looking, in a crinkly sort of way. He looked bored, as if weddings were not his favorite thing to report on.
Lizzie said, “You’ve been studying him for five solid minutes. What is it? Love at first sight?”
I blushed scarlet and sat right down to warm up at the piano. The piano, however, did not play. It clanked. It plopped. It banged. But it didn’t play “Ralph!” I howled.
“Mrs. Fitzwilliam!” Ralph howled.
A little horde of people quickly gathered around the piano: the wedding photographer, the newspaper-y kid, miscellaneous exotic ushers, and our combo. “Did you have the piano tuned?” said Ralph, which I thought was a rather stupid question.
“Tuned?” said Mrs. Fitzwilliam. “I had it polished. Isn’t it a beautiful piano?”
We just sort of stood there. She left. Ralph said, “There’s time to drive back to my place and grab my electric piano.”
“No,” said Lizzie, “you wouldn’t get back in time. The rest of us will have to wing it.”
I felt terrible. It wasn’t my fault; it was the fault of the stupid, unmusical Fitzwilliams, but still, everyone except me was properly equipped.
“If you like,” said the newspaper-y kid quietly, “I’ll drive to your place and get your electric piano.”
“You will?” cried Ralph. He tried to hug the boy, but the threat of a hug from Ralph tends to make people jump back.
“I’ll go with him,” I said. “I know the way. Give me your house keys, Ralph.”
“Drive fast,” said Ralph to the boy.
“No,” said Lizzie, “the roads are icy.”
“Don’t listen to her,” said Ralph. “The roads are fine.”
The boy nodded at them both, giving the distinct impression that he could make his own decisions about ice and speed, and off we went.
The huge house was filled with people, milling about and embracing each other and drinking champagne. I could hardly keep up with the boy, hampered by my long skirt. He reached back, grabbed my hand, and hauled me along. Ah romance, I thought. My first walk down a corridor holding a boy’s hand. I whipped around three people, whammed into another, and caught up to the boy so hard I slammed into him; and we both fell out of the mansion. “Sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay. I have plenty of vertebrae. I can spare a few.”
We leaped over icy spots, dodged incoming guests, vaulted into his car, and drove out the back way.
“Belt up, will you?” said the boy impatiently.
I hadn’t said a single word. I stared at him, flushing.
“Seat belt,” he said, as if to a moron. “Put it on, will you?”
“Oh. Oh, right. Sure.” I fumbled for the seat belt. It was a different model than the ones I was used to, and I couldn’t get the silly thing to come out of its slot.
The boy sighed as if uncoordinated females were always doing this sort of thing to him. Driving with one finger of his left hand, he leaned way over me, practically lying in my lap, and plugged me in. “We’re going to get killed,” I said indignantly. “Sit up and drive.”
“We’re driving over ice,” he said. “You need a seat belt. My sister had an accident last month and got her face cut up because she didn’t have her seat belt on.”
“I know, but you were driving with one finger and not looking at the road in order to put it on me.”
“It’s a one-way road,” he said, “and I was only down for a second.”
After that we sat in a huffy silence.
Things are going fine, I thought. I broke his back when he tried to hold my hand and I’m scolding him about his driving technique when he’s trying to get me a keyboard to play on. The way I handle boys, I should be ready for my first date when I’m, oh, say fifty-five.
“Turn left,” I said. “Now down this little driveway. Bear right.”
You can’t beat my conversation, I thought. Light, funny, entertaining. “Stop. It’s this one.”
We struggled out of his car—struggled because I not only couldn’t put the seat belt on, I couldn’t get it off. Then we spent a full minute attacking the front door lock before deciding Ralph didn’t have a key to his front door on his key ring. “This is like combat service,” muttered the boy. The two of us staggered to the back door over Ralph’s unshoveled path, where Ralph’s deep boot holes had iced over, making solid snow sculptures.
My legs are not as long as Ralph’s and his boot holes were too far apart for me. I could feel it coming like cruel fate. I was going to fall. I yelled, grabbed, twitched, and reached; and I fell anyway. Unfortunately, during a twitch I got hold of the boy’s jacket and pulled him right over on top of me.
We lay there for a moment, and then he said, “What’s your name?”
He sounded as if he kept a notebook full of the names of people he never wanted to see again and had a whole page waiting for me.
“Alison,” I said.
He managed to flop over and get on all fours and crawl off me. “Funny,” he said. “You didn’t look this klutzy at the piano, Alison.”
“I’m very coordinated at a piano. Really.”
The way I got up out of Ralph’s boot holes you wouldn’t have thought I was capable of anything. I have never blushed so hard in my life. Even my elbows blushed. We got the back door open and walked gingerly into the kitchen. “Where is the piano?” said the boy grimly.
“You sound like a soldier who’s regretting that he ever volunteered,” I said.
“I’m tough,” he told me. “I always finish a mission. No matter how many beautiful brunettes fling themselves on me. Now where is this portable piano?”
“It’s under his bed. Ralph is sure somebody will break in here someday so he leaves the color television right out where they can’t miss it, but his instruments he keeps under the bed.”
We shoved piles of dirty socks and unplayed sheet music out of our way and hauled the keyboard case out from under the bed. It was an old model, not nearly as light and streamlined as they make them now. We each took a handle and lurched toward the door.
“This is portable?” grunted the boy.
“More so than a concert grand,” I said.
The three of us did not fit through the kitchen door.
“You go on,” said the boy. “We’ll follow you this time.”
It’s pretty bad when a guy would rather have an electric instrument for company. I went out and concentrated very hard on where I put my feet.
We were backing out the driveway when I remembered I had forgotten to lock the kitchen door ag
ain.
“It’s okay, Alison,” he said. “There’s nothing there to steal but the color TV now.”
“Look out for that ice,” I said.
“Thanks, I see it, Alison.”
“Turn left here.”
“Thanks. I remember the turn, Alison.”
I thought, no wonder I have no boyfriends. I can’t talk.
It seemed grossly unfair that he could call me Alison—he used my name as if it were a rock he was throwing at me—and I didn’t have a name for him. I’ll ask him his name, I thought. I’ll say, What’s your name? I rehearsed it mentally. I sounded like an army interrogation officer.
I could play Debussy and Chopin, Bacharach and Joplin. But I couldn’t ask a boy his name. Stupid, stupid, stupid, I told myself. I said, “So. And what is your name?”
His profile was toward me. His cheek was wrinkled, as if bits of previous smiles were stuck to it. “Ted,” he told me.
I had what I wanted. His name. And I couldn’t think of one word to say to Ted now that I knew him. I like the laugh lines on your cheek, Ted. Thank you for not breaking my ribs when I made you fall on me. Tell me your last name. I want to telephone you. Ask me my last name. Ask me my phone number. Tell me you want to telephone me.
“We’re here,” said Ted. He didn’t even mention my seat belt this time. He just reached over and unclicked it himself. What a nice arm you have, Ted, I thought. Pretty good fingers, too.
We vaulted out very athletically and after that staggered under the weight of the keyboard. Then we couldn’t even get in the mansion, because our passage was blocked by loudly conversing, very jolly guests.
I said ineffectual things like “Excuse me, please?” “Uh, sir, could you move a speck to your left, please?” and nobody even noticed me, let alone moved.
In a big, barrellike voice, Ted informed the guests that it was time to shove over. “Musical instrument coming through,” he yelled, and we used the keyboard as a battering ram. I wondered if some of the people we removed from our path were ambassadors, chairmen of boards, and advisers to presidents.