The Lucy Variations

  “Will has arranged with Diane Krasner for Lucy to be in the showcase.”

  Lucy wished she could have said it without invoking Will’s name, because that was what would hurt him the most. “It was more like Diane came to him,” Lucy told Gus.

  “Why?” he asked her, his face reddening.

  “How can she be ready for a showcase after eight months away?” Grandpa Beck said, confused. “You’ll only embarrass yourself, Lucy.”

  She ignored him, kept her eyes on Gus. “It’s complicated. She brought it up, and Will thinks it’s a good idea. So I can prove something to myself.”

  Her grandfather threw down his napkin over his unfinished food. “You think you can waltz away and then waltz back on a whim?” He turned to Lucy’s mother. “Will is involved in this? I hirÀn this? ed him for Gustav.”

  “It’s not fair,” Gus said.

  Lucy’s dad, seated next to Gus, told him gently, “It isn’t fair or unfair. It’s just what’s happening. It’s like before, when you first started: Lucy was always there, too. You liked that.”

  Her dad thought it was all about the playing. He didn’t get the Will part.

  “But she quit.”

  “She changed her mind.”

  “But…” Gus’s face went red, then he shoved back his chair and got up to run from the room.

  “This is insanity,” Grandpa Beck said. “Music school? You’ve played at the biggest festivals all around the world! What can music school do for you now? What is your goal?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucy confessed.

  “You don’t know.”

  “Maybe I’ll teach.”

  “Teach? ” He laughed. “Do you know what teachers are? They’re failed performers. Even your precious Will is only teaching because he tried to make it as a professional and he failed to rise above the competition. Teaching isn’t a goal. It’s a defeat.”

  Lucy opened her mouth to defend Will, but her mother jumped in first.

  “Dad, that simply isn’t true!” Her face was flushed. “I wish I’d kept playing. I wish I’d had the chance to teach. I wish I played for a church choir. I wish I accompanied amateur, wannabe Broadway singers. Any of those things that you believed were a fate too humiliating to contemplate, I wish I’d done, to stay connected to that part of myself. A part that you gave me.”

  Lucy’s dad put his arm around her mom.

  “Katherine,” Grandpa said, “it was different. You weren’t—”

  “I wasn’t good enough. I know. All of Lucy’s life, you’ve been saying that you didn’t want her to end up like me,” her mother said. “Neither do I.”

  Her grandfather got up, and he stormed off, too, leaving Lucy at the table with her parents. “I’m sorry,” she told them. Quitting had caused conflict in her family in a way she’d never wanted. Now unquitting was doing it, too.

  Her father patted her hand. “So are we, poulette.”

  At ten fifteen she called Will. She figured, at this hour, it would go to voicemail, but she at least wanted to tell him yes, she’d do the showcase, and if he answered she could give him all the gory details of what had happened at dinner. Maybe he’d have advice about how to deal with Gus, too. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she had, and there was no way out of it.

  Aruna answered.

  She didn’t say hello. She said, “Kind of late, Lucy.”

  “I’m…

  ” Lucy took a second to gather her startled self, a buzz of adrenaline shooting through her arms. “Sorry, I thought the phone would be off.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you’re calling my husband in the middle of the night.”

  It’s just after ten, she thought. “I’m sorry. I’ll call back tomorrow.&rdquoÀmorrow.&;

  “I’m sure you will.” Then Aruna hung up.

  Lucy rose from the bed and paced the room, sick to her stomach.

  She saw, in her memory, the way she’d held on to Will in the car, on and on. Touching the skin of his neck. Will’s lips on her fingers. The pull of his eyes. The feeling of falling. All of their texts.

  And what Reyna had said. Not at the party, but before. Don’t be that girl.

  She didn’t sleep. All night she worried about Aruna.

  Maybe she’d tell Will he couldn’t be friends with Lucy. Or, worse, that he couldn’t come to the house any more at all, even for Gus.

  She remembered Gus’s face when he’d told her not to mess anything up with Will. And she’d told him she wouldn’t.

  Nice job, Lucy.

  But what was she supposed to do? Pretend like there was no connection? She knew he was married; she wasn’t going to do anything. She needed his friendship, however she could have it. Someday Gus would understand, when he went through this himself.

  This. Whatever this was.

  She didn’t want to face Gus in the morning.

  Before he got up, she double-checked the bus route, went downstairs to eat a bowl of oatmeal, wrote a note for her mom, and quietly left the house in the December morning dark. The stillness, the aloneness of the time of morning, the reviving snap in the air, were all what she needed. Forget the bus; she’d walk to school.

  The building had a dim and lonely look to it when she got there, but the doors were unlocked. Lucy went in and sat on the floor outside Mr. Charles’s room, curled into her coat and holding her phone in her hand, eager to hear from Will and also scared.

  She’d have to see Reyna today, too. And apologize or not apologize or …whatever. She wouldn’t change what she’d done on Friday, but she also didn’t want Reyna to be mad.

  It felt like every time she tried to do something that was best for herself, it meant some other relationship got damaged.

  She stood when Mr. C. came down the hall, and he clutched his heart with exaggerated shock and made a show of looking at his watch. “What is this vision before me?”

  “Hi.”

  He opened the classroom door. “Come on in, Lucy.” He unpacked his bag onto his desk, and she sat at Mary Auerbach’s, which had faint pencil doodles on it, swirls and lines. “Did you know Mary Auerbach is a vandal?” she asked, pointing to the desk.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get her expelled.” He patted his chest pocket like he was looking for something. “Is everything all right?”

  She couldn’t answer. Instead she asked, “Do you want me to clean off the whiteboard?”

  “Um, sure.” He got the spray bottle and towel out of his drawer and set them on his desk. Lucy cleaned the whiteboard, and he dealt with some papers. After a while he paused and looked up. “Whatever it is,” he said, “it’ll be okay.”

  With one final wipe, she got the last of Friday’sƀ assignments off the board. “You’re a good teacher, Mr. Charles.”

  Reyna and Carson were at the table in the second-floor lounge. Lucy watched them from where they wouldn’t see her and considered her options. She could dump her stuff on a chair and sit with them and act like everything was okay, maybe make a joke.

  Except she couldn’t think of one.

  She abruptly turned and went down the stairs before they felt her watching. And though she still had three more classes, she found herself walking out of the building. Walking and walking.

  She could still back out.

  She could call Will and say no, she’d decided not to do the showcase. She could make sure not to run into him at the house and not text him any more. Things would be good with Gus again. Ironically, changing her mind would probably only make her relationship with her grandfather worse. He’d say, I told you so, that he knew she wasn’t committed.

  But she didn’t want to back out. And she didn’t want to avoid Will.

  She didn’t want to run away from this, from herself.

  She only needed to make the call, to tell him yes.

  First, one more thing.

  She boarded a bus to the Richmond District.

  Grace Chang’s apartment building didn’t quite match up with Lucy’s memo
ries of it. But then, she’d only been there a couple of times: once when Grace had invited Lucy’s whole family over for dinner to meet her parents, who were visiting from Washington, and once when she’d had only Lucy over. They’d walked a few blocks to Grace’s favourite dim sum shop and had loaded up on shrimp cakes and sausage buns and char siu. Back at the apartment, Grace had made tea.

  Lucy couldn’t remember now the point of that afternoon, like if Grace had wanted to talk about something specific, or if there had been some music-related purpose to it, or if they were just hanging out, the way Will sometimes did with Gus. She mostly remembered the food, so delicious eaten straight out of the greasy, white bags at the small, round table in Grace’s kitchen.

  There was no reason to think she’d be home in the middle of the day. She probably had students. Of course she does, Lucy thought, feeling dumb for even thinking it could be otherwise. Just because Lucy had quit didn’t mean Grace would have totally changed careers.

  She found the doorbell for Chang. Her finger hovered over it a few seconds. Longer.

  They hadn’t talked since Prague. Obviously, Grace had heard what happened, all sorts of versions of it – from Lucy’s parents, from other people who had been at the festival, from the blogs. She hadn’t heard it from Lucy.

  Lucy had still been in shock at her own actions and her grandmother’s death and the way her parents and Grandpa Beck had handled everything. She’d shut down. So she wouldn’t take Grace’s calls. When she’d listened to the voicemails, tears sprang up in some kind of Pavlovian response to Grace’s voice, which Lucy had always loved. Soft, but not hard to hear. Light, but assertive. A trace of the particular kind of accent that San Francisco fi

  rst- and second-generation Chinese Americans have – clipped consonants and a few dropped letters on certain words.

  “What happened, Lucy?” she’d asked in one of her messages.

  Lucy had meant to call her back. And maybe iˀ. And mat wasn’t too late to tie off this remaining loose thread, before at last moving forwards.

  She depressed the doorbell and waited a reasonable amount of time. Pressed it again, waited again. Grace wasn’t home. Lucy could probably find her number somewhere, or e-mail her. Maybe.

  Lucy wandered around the neighbourhood for a while, looking for the particular dim sum place they’d gone to. It had a dragon on the awning, she remembered. Unfortunately, several of them did. She thought she found the right one somewhere on lower Clement, but as she walked down the street eating shrimp cakes from the bag, she could only think, Doesn’t taste the same.

  Martin caught her on the way in the back door. “The jig is up, doll face. School called; I had to report you to the authorities.” He gestured with his eyes towards the main part of the house. “She’s in her office.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “And I heard about your little announcement last night.” He leaned against the kitchen island. “Boy, when you decide something, you move fast.”

  Lucy held her book bag in front of her. “Gus hates me.”

  “Oh, I doubt that.”

  “No. He does.”

  Martin tilted his head. “For playing the showcase? A competition would be different. But it’s you and Gus and eight or nine other people, right?”

  “It’s not that. It’s…” She looked at Martin. If she started talking about Will, even said his name right now, he’d see exactly what was going on, with his spooky intuition. “Anyway, we’ll work through it.”

  “Yes, you will.” He opened his arms. “Come here. Give old Martin a hug.”

  She did. He squeezed her close and said, “Your grandma would want to be here to see all of it. She didn’t want to miss a thing.”

  Lucy nodded and pulled back. “You’ll come to the showcase? Since she can’t?”

  “It’ll be my pleasure.”

  She passed the music room on her way to her mom’s office. Gus’s and Will’s voices, mixed with piano notes, came from behind the door. So Aruna hadn’t banned him from the house. Lucy felt mild relief.

  Her mother was working at her laptop with a calendar open next to her on the desk, a smaller desk than her grandfather’s and more ornate, Victorian. It suited her mother’s classic style.

  Lucy didn’t even wait for a reproachful look or an accusation. “I cut most of school today. I…” She hadn’t planned what to say after that.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I’ll get detention. But if there’s anything else you want to…you know, do to me…”

  Her mother, with intent focus on the computer, said, “I don’t think there’s anything I could do to you that would make any difference.”

  “I’ve been fighting with Reyna. I couldn’t stay. I—”

  “I thought we were turning things around, Lucy. Remember yesterday?” She closed her la΀ptop. “Yesterday. I just want to know what to expect. Are you going to commit to this and then back out? Am I going to spend my money to send you to music school only to find out a semester later you want to be a geologist?”

  “No, I don’t know. I mean no, I don’t want…a geologist?” Lucy laughed. She was tired from her walks, her bus rides, her thoughts. “But if you need me to say ‘for ever’, I don’t think you should spend your money. I’ll…” I’ll what? “I’ll figure out something else.”

  “Oh, you will.”

  “Yeah. I will.”

  They stared at each other until Lucy’s mom put her face in her hands and rubbed her temples. “Don’t prove my father right, Lucy. Please. That’s all I ask.”

  The knock on her door came about an hour later.

  It would be Will.

  Lucy, I need you to not contact me any more.

  But when she opened the door, he was smiling. Warm, winning. He didn’t seem upset at all. “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  It was the first time they’d seen each other since Friday night, in the car. Her head felt floaty and peculiar, as it had then, and she realized she’d missed him. She almost said it. I missed you.

  “Have you decided?” he asked. Then held out his hand and said, “Don’t tell me! I mean, don’t tell me what you decided. Just if you did.”

  “I did.”

  “Come downstairs with me?” he asked.

  “Okay.”

  He started down the first, narrow attic stairs, then stopped, turned, and looked at her; their eyes met for a second. He didn’t move. The space was small; they were close. He touched his face and seemed about to say something. She let her eyes meet his again, and her head spun. “What?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry, Lucy,” he said, his voice low. “About what happened last night. The…phone thing. You haven’t done anything wrong. I promise. I’m sorry I didn’t call you about it earlier today. It’s been busy, and I wanted you to see my face.” He pointed to himself. “See? My face?” Then he drew his finger in an X across his chest slowly. “I promise.”

  Lucy bit her lip to keep her nervous tears in and nodded.

  “Okay. Come on.”

  In the music room, Lucy first sat on the love seat. Will closed the door behind him and sat on the piano bench. “Over here,” he said, patting the bench and making room.

  She got up, walked over, settled in next to him. Their legs touched.

  “I want to play something with you,” he said. He shuffled through some music on top of the piano, found a few sheets, and put them up while Lucy warmed her fingers with arpeggios.

  She smiled when she saw the piece. “I love Prokofiev.”

  “I’ll start. When it splits off here –” he pointed to the middle of the page – “you do this part.”

  “I know this one. It wasn’t written for four hands.”

  “No, this is my arrangement. But no one does it quite right, thӀite righe way I hear it in my head. Obviously what we really need here are two pianos, but let’s try. I’ll do the pedals.”

  He began, and Lucy felt right away, listening, what h
e wanted from the piece in this arrangement. Less bounce than the way it was usually played. Con vivace, with life, but not so much life that the music got lost in the performance of it. Her cue came, and she joined in. Her left hip was against Will’s right, on the small bench, but she only felt the notes.

  There were a few spots when they got out of sync, and Lucy would say, “Whoops,” or lean forwards to squint at his handwritten music and ask “Is that a triplet?” and Will would answer or give a little instruction, and at times their hands collided, but they didn’t stop until the end.

  They both let their fingers rest on the keys for a few seconds. Then Will, smiling at her, said, “Wow. It’s like you’re in my head.”

  “This is a good arrangement.”

  “Thank you.” He played a few phrases of something Lucy didn’t recognize. She stayed on the bench, next to him. “Can I tell you something?” he asked her, still playing.

  “Yeah.” She put her right hand back on the piano and added a little to what he played.

  “What I said last week on the phone, about growing up …”

  “And not being special?” she asked, with a small laugh.

  “Yeah. I want you to forget I said that. I wish I hadn’t.”

  “Why? You were right.”

  “No.” He shook his head and stopped playing, turning slightly towards her, still so close. “That’s not how I want to be. Maybe at home. When you’re married to someone, they’re used to seeing you at your worst. But you shouldn’t have to hear that stuff or believe it when you’re sixteen. I’m usually more careful about letting that side of me come out around my students.”

  She kept noodling on the keys. “I’m not your student.”

  “I know. Can you stop for a second?” He lifted her hand off the piano and set it onto her lap before letting go. She looked at it, an alive thing with a nerve system that in this second seemed connected to every other part of her body. “I like the idea of being the best version of myself when I’m with you.”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  “I could have at least waited a few more weeks before showing you Mr. Hyde and his bleak, cynical thoughts.”