The Lucy Variations

  “Yeah.”

  “Also you must know you’re beautiful.”

  Lucy looked at her hands in her lap. Her mom and dad had told her that. Her grandma. Reyna. Sometimes she thought it about herself. This was different. “I’m not mad that you talked about me,” she said quietly. “I have to tell my parents, anyway. This will help make me do it.”

  “Oh, God, thank you,” he said, relief in his voice. “When I saw the look on your face in the kitchen with Diane, I thought I’d really effed it up.”

  Their freeway exit loomed. She imagined herself home, with her family, telling them. Tomorrow?

  “No,” she said. “Maybe it’s not even that big of a dealbig of a. Maybe I’m the one who’s been making it harder than it needs to be. Reyna said something like that…”

  “Is that what you were fighting about?”

  “That’s…too hard to explain.”

  “Okay. I won’t pry.”

  He drove exactly the speed limit and not one mile-per-hour over. “Hey,” he said, “mind if I take Portola? I know it’s the long way, but I love the view.”

  “Me too.”

  He rested his elbow on the driver’s side door and touched the hair at his left temple. “About impressing people…I guess I’ve been feeling old lately. I can see my future, being an old guy who teaches. You know, never having my own success again.”

  She’d been watching him talk, the shape of his jaw as it moved around his words. She was losing track of the conversation and of her own thoughts. The experience of being in the car with him had become more physical than mental. She was aware of everything he did with his hands, mouth, voice. And noticing her own body, the grip of denim on her thighs and the sweater hood behind her neck, prickling.

  They passed the School of the Arts, and that brought her back to her mind.

  When Lucy was in eighth grade, she’d asked her mother about going there for high school. She’d been looking at the school’s website. The kids seemed like they were having so much fun.

  Her mom had laughed the idea away with one sentence: You’re overqualified, to say the least.

  Lucy asked Will now, realizing it had been her turn to talk for a while. “Is it dumb to go to music school when I already kind of…know everything?” Then she covered her eyes. “Um, that sounded awful.”

  Will chuckled. “You’re great, Lucy. But nobody knows everything.”

  “I just mean—”

  “No, I know. Listen.” Will pulled over, turned off the engine. The car was cool and dark, the spectacular lights of the city before them, and a dizzying wave washed over Lucy as he leaned into her space a little bit to turn on the stereo and mess with some buttons.

  Then it started, a piece she knew and loved: the four opening notes of the woodwinds, the build of the timpani, strings. The piano came in. Skilful. Expressive.

  “Do you recognize that?” he asked.

  “Mendelssohn. Concerto number two.”

  “It’s you.”

  “What?”

  “It’s you, Lucy.”

  She stared out at the famous view she’d been seeing her whole life – the Transamerica Pyramid, the string of lights across the Bay Bridge. Yes, it was her. She remembered: the hours in the music room with Grace Chang sitting near. She remembered the day she’d nailed this piece, found the music in it, made it a part of her. How it had landed, finally, not in her head, where it had been confounding her for months, but in her heart, where it belonged.

  She’d flown with her mother and grandparents to Ohio to record it with the Cleveland Orchestra. She could smell the rehearsal room – rosin and old paper.

  “My grandma came with us when we made the CD,” she told Will, still staring out over the city. “I think she was my lucky charm, because the whole thing whole twent so well. No drama. I was happy. I was good. I—” She stopped talking, so she could listen and resurrect the sense she’d had at the time of being one with the orchestra, and with herself, the way everything that wasn’t the music had run over her like a distant, quiet stream.

  She didn’t just remember the love she’d had as she played. She felt it, now. Love. Like falling.

  “It’s damn near perfect,” Will said quietly. “God. Listen to that.”

  She turned away from the skyline and looked at him. They listened and stayed face-to-face, and the moment was a window, inching up, and she went through it, his eyes pulling her along, seeing her, and seeing her, and seeing her.

  He broke his gaze abruptly and pointed at the stereo. “That is the point of music school. To bring that Lucy back. Because you need to separate all the family shit from that. And I think, for you, school would be the best road to take. If you do it the old way, you’re going to wind up in the old traps.”

  Lucy tried to hear his words through the moment, through feeling so close to him and to herself.

  “School will still push you,” he continued. “It’ll be demanding in a different way than you’re used to. But it will be your teachers and mentors and advisors and peers who push you, which is, I don’t know, just healthier for it to be those people and not the ones you really need love from. I mean your family.”

  She swallowed, to clear the pressure that had been building in her throat. “That makes sense.” Her voice came out unsteady.

  “Are you okay?”

  She nodded and let their eyes meet again.

  “Should I get you home?”

  No, she thought. “What…?” is happening?

  He thought she hadn’t heard him. “You’re tired,” he said. “Me too. I’ll get you home.”

  He started the engine and continued on to Lucy’s house. He’d turned off the CD. Quiet filled the car.

  She felt him glance at her once or twice, but he didn’t speak. When they stopped in front of the house, she delayed saying goodbye by moving as slowly as possible. She went through the steps: took off her seat belt, turn

  ed her body towards the passenger door, opened it.

  Then she turned back. She reached across to hug Will.

  She held on a second, and a second longer.

  Don’t make me let go. Her breath caught, like she could cry, her heart full.

  “All right,” Will said quietly, patting her back. “I know, Lucy.”

  She moved her hand and felt the skin of his neck under her fingers, warm.

  “Okay,” he said, pressing his palm to the back of her head. He took her hand off his neck and lifted it to his face. He held it there a moment, grazing it with his lips, before saying again, “Okay.”

  She let go and got out of the car, went to the front door, and waved to him to show she’d got it open and was safely inside.

  Lucy didn’t send Will any texts on Saturday; she didn’t understand what had happened or how to act. He didn’t send any to her, either. She stayed in her room, neglecting her homework in favour of making a playlist for him. His Christmas gift. It included some of the music they’d talked about at the coffee shop. She titled the list: “What I Love”.

  That distracted her for several hours. Because once she started listening to something she loved to see if it belonged on Will’s CD, she couldn’t just stop in the middle of it. Love meant paying attention, so she sprawled out on the floor with her good earphones, trying to hear every song as if for the first time, falling in love with each one over again. And certain songs brought back memories, like being little and riding in the car with her mom, and the B-52s coming on the eighties station, and her mom singing along. Where’d that Mom go? Lucy didn’t know what her mother listened to now, what made her sing with the radio.

  The B-52s brought her back to reality. She needed to prepare herself for the talk with her mom that had to happen this weekend.

  Because she was actually doing this. If she’d had any doubt left, Will erased it when he made her listen to herself with the Mendelssohn. She wasn’t afraid any more about what anyone else would think.

  But when Will called her on Sund
ay, when she was coming in from a walk, she almost didn’t answer, suddenly shy and uncertain at his name on her phone’s screen. Finally, after ring number four, she picked up and began the climb up to her room.

  “Hi.”

  “Hey,” he said. “Everything okay over there?”

  “Yeah. Good. How about you?” She took the stairs two at a time, glancing in Gus’s room on her way. He was lying on the floor, reading a comic book or a magazine or something.

  “Good. Spent yesterday recovering and cleaning up from the party, then we went to a student’s chamber-music recital.”

  We. Him and Aruna. His wife. “How was it?” She’d made it up the attic stairs and closed her door behind her.

  “Fine. That’s actually why – well, part of why – I’m calling. Diane Krasner was there. She was serious about the showcase, Lucy. She said they’d make a space for you.”

  “What? No. I told her no.”

  “Actually, I told her no. You ran off.”

  “Same thing,” she said. “Because, no. Obviously I’m not going to play the showcase.” She paused. “Right?”

  “Well. I think you should seriously consider it.”

  “It’s in, like, two weeks!” Lucy sat on her bed and rested her head on her hand, confused. “And…why? Wouldn’t that be the ‘old way’? Like you said? The old traps?”

  “I thought about this all night,” he said. “I promise I don’t recommend it lightly. But listen: what’s going to happen when you tell your family you want to go to music school?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out soon.”

  “You’ll get push back. That’s my guess.”

  “PushÀ">&ldquo back is an understatement.” Her grandfather would more than baulk at spending that kind of money on something Lucy had already quit once. She’d had her chance, he’d say, and she’d discarded it.

  “And it’s what you’ve been afraid of. What’s been keeping you from telling them what you want. Right? You’re afraid they’ll say no and that them saying no will deter you somehow. Mentally.”

  “And also I didn’t know what I wanted.”

  “You do now.” His words slowed down, quieted. “I felt it in the car on Friday, Lucy, how you connected to the self, the you who made the recording.”

  She slid off the bed and sat on the floor. She dug into her pocket for his nail clippers, which she’d been keeping with her at all times.

  “I do,” she said. “But not…”

  “I know what you’re going to say. But performance is the language your grandfather speaks. Your mother, too, because of him. You playing the showcase would make a statement they’ll understand.” His voice gained excitement. “It would prove you mean it, Lucy. That you can’t be talked or, I don’t know, shamed out of it. And it being so soon is a plus. You can’t stress yourself out too much with preparation, and this whole thing will be dealt with by the New Year, and you can start…fresh.”

  A grand gesture, an echo of the drama with which she’d quit, only in the reverse. And without the distressing shock/embarrassment factor, because her grandfather would know about it ahead of time.

  “I don’t know.” What would her grandmother think? “What about Gus? Isn’t that kind of stealing his spotlight or something?”

  “It’s a feel-good holiday concert. Not a competition. Plenty of spotlight to go around.”

  When she didn’t say anything, he continued: “I get that you’re unsure, and I wish you had more time to think about it. But Diane needs to know by tomorrow. If you say yes, they want time to add your name to the advertising.”

  There wasn’t any point in delaying the inevitable. Left to her own timing, she might never take any action, period. Doing the showcase would get all the pain over with at once: Gus would be mad for a while. Grandpa would fume.

  She’d rip off the scab of the last eight months with one good, hard yank.

  “When tomorrow do I have to decide?”

  “As early as possible. I think this is good,” he said. “Trust me, okay?”

  “Okay.” She opened her hand and looked at the nail clippers on her palm. “Okay.”

  Neither of them spoke for a few seconds, then Will said, “I guess I should let you go.”

  They said goodbye; then, remembering the beginning of their conversation, she texted him to ask, That was part of the reason you called. What was the other part?

  She lay on the floor, her phone in one hand, the clippers in the other, until he finally replied.

  To tell you that Friday night was special to me.

  The words were a current, electric and bright, that travelled through her bloodstream, into her heart and back out to her fingertips, that typed: Me too.

  After a second he replied: xo.

  She found her mother in the parlour reading the Sunday papers in one of the armchairs and drinking coffee. With her feet up, her hair in a simple pony, and wearing stylish reading glasses, she could have been the star of a catalogue shoot for some perfect J.Crew late-Sunday-morning lifestyle spread.

  “Hey,” Lucy said, to announce herself. She picked up the arts section, which her mother had tossed aside along with sports and business. She sat in the other armchair.

  “Hi there.” Her mom nudged the ottoman so that Lucy could share it.

  “Thanks.” She pretended to read the paper for a while and waited for her mother to ask her something. Like how school was going, for example, or where she’d been Friday night, or maybe she’d offer some little bit of conversation about the trip to Germany. When it became clear her mother wasn’t going to talk, Lucy said, “I’m sorry again about what happened before you left.”

  Her mother let a corner of the paper fall down so that she could see Lucy better. “I know. Me too. It was bad timing.” Then she straightened the paper back up and kept reading.

  “Mom.”

  “Mm?”

  “That thing Grandma used to say, what her mother told her, that German phrase? That everything will be okay? How come you never say that?”

  Her mother put down the newspaper and took her feet off the ottoman. She set her reading glasses on top of the paper. “I don’t know. Maybe I don’t believe it.”

  “I do,” Lucy said. “I think I do. Mom, I need to talk to you.”

  She could begin with a statement, something attention-grabbing. I’m playing in the showcase and backtrack from there. Or she could return to the beginning, to the first moment she’d started to feel like the playing wasn’t for her any more. But she couldn’t rehash every hurt, every disappointment, every moment that felt like betrayal, and expect to arrive anywhere good.

  “I’m sorry that I quit.”

  That was the sum of it, and she meant it in every possible interpretation.

  “Oh, Lucy, that’s long past us.” Her mother’s voice was tired. “I should have handled the whole thing differently. We shouldn’t have made you go to Prague. I should have put my foot down with Grandpa. I should have listened to your dad. I thought about it on the trip, and…well, it’s just so complicated.”

  “It’s not past us, though. It’s not past Grandpa. And it’s not past me, and I—” Lucy moved to sit on the ottoman, now close enough to rest her head on her mother’s knees.

  “Your hair is so short now,” she murmured, putting her hand on Lucy. “I’ve always wanted to try short hair. I’m too scared. I’m a coward, Lucy.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I do want to believe that everything will be okay.”

  “Mom,” Lucy said. “I want to play again. I might want to go to music school.” She lifted her head; her mother drew her hand back. “Mom, I miss it so much.”

  Her mother stared for a few moments. “Oh. That’s…not what I expected.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Are you sure, Lucy?”

  “I’m sure right now. I’m not saying I’ll be doing it in ten years. I can’t…” How could anyone be expected to plan their whole life at any
given moment, say “I promise” for ever, see into the future? There always had to be room for uncertainty, for change. “Yes. I’m sure for now.”

  “All right,” she said. “All right,” she repeated, more definite this time. “Let’s talk.”

  Even after their long talk, Lucy couldn’t have imagined the strength her mother would show at dinner.

  “We’re going to discuss Lucy’s future,” she said as soon as the food was on the table. She laid out the facts plainly and unemotionally. She didn’t look at Grandpa Beck the whole time and didn’t let him interrupt, though he tried more than once.

  Lucy talked, too, about how she’d missed playing but not the way her career had gotten, holding everything else hostage, the relentless pressure.

  “If you can’t handle pressure, you shouldn’t play,” Grandpa Beck said.

  “Why? ”

  “Stefan,” her father said, “are you listening? She doesn’t want us directing or interfering.”

  “ ‘Interfering’? Oh, is that what we’ve been doing, giving her this life?”

  Gus stayed quiet, his eyes shifting one way, then the other, following the conversation.

  “She doesn’t know exactly what she wants to do yet,” her mother said. “Music school is definitely on the table. Even the Academy if—”

  “Absolutely not,” Grandpa Beck said.

  “Even the Academy, if that’s what she decides is best and—”

  Lucy raised her hand. “Hi. Sitting right here.”

  “I will never give one cent to those people!”

  “—I will pay for it,” her mother said, “out of the money Mother left me. Marc and I discussed it, and we agree she would approve. If that’s what Lucy wants.”

  Lucy couldn’t remember the last time her parents were so united, in support of her, and not backing down from Grandpa. Gus might be another story. She braced herself for his reaction to what would come next. She’d thought about telling him herself but had chickened out. Her mother broke the news: