The Lucy Variations

Their mother’s eyes flicked to Lucy’s in the rear-view mirror for the briefest second. Then, glancing at Gus, she said, “Is that what you’re doing for the showcase? I wonder if you should do something you’ve known longer. I’ll talk to Will about it.” They were at a red light; she thumbed a reminder into her phone.

  After they dropped off Gus at his school, she asked Lucy, “Do you think the Bach is a good idea? It’s so complicated. Remember how you…”

  “Yeah, I remember.” She’d done that same piece at a competition once and had gotten a little confused in the middle. The motif repeated in so many ways, it was easy to get lost.

  “I worry it’s a bit…dry. And technically ambitious? It’s a showcase, a fundraiser. Not a competition. People want to be entertained.”

  Lucy stared out the window. Only you. And the music. Easy for Will to say. “We wouldn’t want to let down the all-important ‘people’. ”

  With an exasperated sigh, her mother said, “You know what I mean, Lucy.”

  “Yes, you’re right. No point in playing at all if you can’t be perfect every single time, I always say.”

  Whatever last words her mother had, she didn’t say them. She stayed silent all the way to Speare, where Lucy got out and slammed the car door, hoping Mr. Charles didn’t totally hate her for the day before.

  She was early. Mary Auerbach and Mr. Charles were Ch the only ones in the classroom, at his desk, laughing about something as Lucy walked in. She kept her eyes ahead and went straight to her seat to unload her bag. They kept chatting. Lucy took the Munro book Mr. Charles had loaned her up to them, interrupting. “Thanks for this. I know it’s your own special copy. Do you want it back? Or…”

  Mary rolled her eyes and went to her seat. A few other students trickled in.

  “Well, eventually. But you keep it as long as you need to, Lucy.”

  “I’m sorry I was late again,” she muttered, holding the book to her chest. “After I promised I’d try harder.”

  “Thank you for saying so.”

  She waited for more. A still friends or an I know you can do better.

  He raised his eyebrows, as if wondering why she was standing there.

  “I had a quick question about my paper.” She put her fingertips on his desk and looked at the in tray where she’d left the note and the pumpkin bread eons ago.

  “If it’s quick.” The bell would ring in a minute; the classroom filled.

  “It’s…” She studied the two or three chest hairs that showed above his shirt collar. And realized she didn’t care about her paper any more, or about impressing him. How could she have ever thought she’d find the same thing in writing an English paper that she’d had with music? “I forgot what I was going to say.”

  “When you remember ask me again after class?”

  “Yeah, okay,” she said, suspecting she wouldn’t.

  At lunch she told Reyna she wanted to hang out after school.

  “Let’s walk some hills,” Reyna said. “I’ve been stress eating for a month.”

  They decided to brave the Lyon Street stairs. There were something like three hundred steps, and an amazing view when you made it to the top. Also lots of tourists, because it was that kind of day, the kind postcards were made of, small fluffy clouds floating in a crisp blue sky over multimillion-dollar houses. They did the stairs twice, then Reyna declared they’d earned a trip to Stella to split a piece of cake.

  “I don’t think it works that way,” Lucy said.

  “It doesn’t. But I want cake.”

  They found an outdoor table. “My grandma used to bring me here all the time. She almost always got a cream puff.”

  “You still miss her a lot?” Reyna asked.

  “Yeah.” She wanted to say more but was pretty sure that if she did, she’d start crying.

  Reyna made a sympathetic face, then held a huge forkful of cake up to Lucy’s mouth. “Eat this. It will ease the pain.”

  Lucy opened wide, and Reyna shoved the cake in. “Classy,” Lucy said, laughing when she could speak again.

  “So how come you wanted to hang out with me instead of with Mr. Charles like usual?”

  “Because I miss you, obviously.” She picked up her own fork and ate more cake. “Also I think I’m getting over him.” She’d always joked with Reyna about her weird crushes, like on the violinist Joshua Bell, whom she stalked once at a music festival in Portland, or her tutor Bennett, even though he wen ed with as definitely gay.

  “Aw. The magic is gone?” Reyna asked.

  Lucy shrugged. “A little bit.” The sudden absence of her crush felt like more of a loss than she wanted to let on. She didn’t understand how that worked, the on/off switch in her subconscious or whatever. Maybe the way he’d acted yesterday pretty much killed it.

  “Here’s an idea: someone under thirty, someone from school.”

  “Eh. No offers.” Also she couldn’t think of one guy at school who interested her. Her last boyfriend and her first kiss had been in eighth grade. Not from school but another pianist – Christian Lundberg, a big Swedish kid with pale eyes and a soft mouth. They both did this charity event in Berkeley, a twenty-four-hour piano play-off with the proceeds going to who knew what, something her mom was into. She and Christian hung out during the breaks, and at around two in the morning, goofy from no sleep and too much sugar, they wandered outside and he asked if she’d be his girlfriend. Just like that. “Will you be my girlfriend?”

  Lucy had agreed with an “okay”.

  They held hands that night, exchanged phone numbers. And had the kind of relationship two busy overachievers tend to have in eighth grade – that is, mostly texting and a few phone calls and then one actual date to a movie. That’s where he kissed her. Not during the previews or over the credits, but right in the middle of the story, which Lucy had been enjoying. So she was annoyed, and also the kiss wasn’t that great.

  “Speare boys are scared of you,” Reyna said.

  She’d heard that from her before. “Explain to me again why I’d want to go out with anyone who’s scared of me?”

  Reyna set down her fork. “Okay, maybe not scared. It’s more an attitude or something. When you came back last year you were ‘that girl in the library who’s always drinking coffee’ and you never talked to anyone but teachers and me and Carson. And we always eat alone, and you never do any extracurriculars.”

  “My whole life was an extracurricular. I’m tired.”

  “I know, but before you quit piano, you used to complain about how you wanted to do quote-unquote normal stuff like student council or the Model UN or the tennis team or even parties. You do none of that. Which is why you don’t know people, and they don’t know you, and boys are scared or think you’re stuck-up.”

  “I took that Red Cross class with you,” Lucy said. “That was school-sponsored.”

  “Look how that worked out.”

  “I guess I’m still adjusting. To my freedom and everything.”

  Reyna pointed her finger in a fake-menacing way. “Adjust faster. Senior year is coming.” Then she signalled with her eyes, and Lucy turned to see what she was looking at. An older woman had approached their table – distinguished, slender, her white hair pulled back into a bun, pink lipstick. She seemed familiar, but Lucy couldn’t place her.

  “Excuse me,” she said, resting a hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “I heard your brother on the radio last month. He was just wonderful. Would you tell him?”

  Lucy smiled. “Yes, I will. Thank you.”

  “He should keep at it.”

  “He is.”

  “And I hope you girls will consider volunteering for the Opening Gala next year,” she told them, before going into the bakery. That’s why she looked familiar – the Symphony Gala, which Grandpa Beck wrote a huge cheque to every year. She ran the thing.

  “ ‘He should keep at it,’ ” Reyna whispered, imitating the woman. “ ‘And not quit, like some people.’ ”

  “She might as well have j
ust said it, right?”

  Reyna nodded, and stared at Lucy a few seconds before taking the last bite of cake.

  “What?” Lucy said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t do that, Rey. What?”

  “Do you ever…Like, does seeing Gus do all this cool stuff ever make you wish you hadn’t quit? That it was still you?” Reyna leaned forwards. “I mean, I know you’re the perfect big sister and everything. But sometimes, only sometimes, do you get jealous?”

  “Of the attention? No. Well, maybe a little.” She scraped frosting off the plate with her fork. “But more that he still loves to play.” And got to work with a teacher like Will. Grace Chang had been nice, and good, but Will was…

  Reyna tilted her head. “Do you think you ever could? Again?”

  “I don’t know.” It

  was the truth, if not the whole truth.

  “Well, I would miss the attention.” She stood up and stretched her arms over her head. “But also I’d miss you if you went back to it. It’s awesome having you at Speare. Don’t leave me again.”

  “I won’t,” Lucy promised.

  The memorial for Great-Aunt Birgit would be the Monday after Thanksgiving. Lucy’s mom and grandpa were going to leave the Wednesday before to help with the arrangements and some issues with the estate and visit distant relatives; her dad would stay with Lucy and Gus.

  “I’ll talk to Martin about making sure you have all the usual things.” Lucy’s mother had her phone and laptop out on the table during dinner – a simple Saturday meal of a large salad topped with leftover chicken, an assortment of cheeses, and toasted baguette. Grandpa Beck’s reading glasses were perched on the end of his nose as he flipped through the small leather daybook he’d been using and refilling for as long as Lucy could remember.

  By “the usual things” Lucy guessed her mom meant – apple-and-sausage stuffing, corn soufflé, chocolate pecan pie. But it would be the first Thanksgiving without Grandma. And the first one in years without Temnikova, who’d always been their guest at holidays. Now, also, the first without her mom or grandpa.

  She pushed some salad around on her plate and looked at her dad. “Can I invite Reyna and Abby?”

  Her mother answered before her father could. “Won’t they be with their family?”

  “I think, with the divorce, it’s kind of awkward.” She asked her dad again: “So can I?”

  “You can invite them, sure, of course.” He poured himself more wine and tore off a piece from the baguette. “Invite anyone you want.”

  “Will and Aruna?” Gus asked.

  “Good idea,” Lucy said. She’d sat outside the music room during their practice most days that week, on the floor, her back to the wall. Imagining, thinking, listening, her presence unbeknownst to Gus and only sometimes beknownst to Will. On Thursday afternoon, before he left, he’d found her in the kitchen, eating from a bag of tortilla chips.

  “Hey there,” he’d said.

  She’d held out the bag to him. “Hi.”

  “Thanks.” He’d taken a few chips, and they stood there crunching. “This reminds me,” he’d said, and then paused. Lucy stopped eating and waited for him to say one of his profound, insightful things. He held up a chip. “I make amazing guacamole.”

  They’d laughed. “It can’t beat Martin’s,” she’d said.

  “So how are you doing?”

  She’d shrugged, rolling down the top of the chip bag. “Confused, I guess.”

  Then he’d torn off a little square from the magnetic notepad Martin kept on the fridge, scribbled something on it, and handed it to her. It was his phone number. “If you ever want to talk. Because, you know, friends call friends.”

  She’d smiled at the note. “Do friends text friends?”

  “They do. As long as friends aren’t driving.”

  “I’m confused,” she’d joked, “not suicidal.”

  She hadn’t called or texted yet. Not that she hadn’t thought about it, but she wasn’t sure what she’d say.

  Now Grandpa Beck took off his glasses and used them to mark his place in his daybook. “Before we go inviting the whole of creation, let’s talk about what we think of Mr. Devi so far.”

  “He told us to call him Will.”

  “Yes, fine. Do you think, Gus, that we made the right choice?”

  His voice had that slow, low pitch it got before he was about to announce his disapproval. On the other hand, the fact that he asked Gus’s opinion was a good sign, and Lucy could tell from the way he turned his best ear towards Gus that he actually cared about the answer.

  Gus was emphatic with his “yes”.

  “He’s certainly got an excellent reputation,” their dad said. “Peter Blakely called him ‘the Miracle Worker’ in an article I dug up online.” He winked at Gus. “Not that you need a miracle, Gustav.”

  “Peter Blakely is a blowhard,” Grandpa Beck said. “And a sycophant.”

  “What’s that?” Gus asked.

  “Someone who makes a career of riding the tails of other people’s glory.”

  “He’s a respected journalist,” Lucy’s father told Gus. “Who your grandfather happens to hate.”

  Lucy didn’t think there was anyone in the business Grandpa Beck actually liked. His enemies, real and imagined, were everywhere.

  Then her mother gestured to her. “Lucy heard him working with Gus the other day and thought it was going well.”

  Her grandfather and father both turned to Lucy.

  “Youfy"th did?” Grandpa Beck asked. “Please share.” He folded his hands in front of him and stared, expectant. It was a challenge. Whatever she’d say, he could shoot down solely because she’d quit. Not just that she’d quit, but that she was a Quitter.

  She chose not to back down. “He has a kind of fuller, I don’t know, musicality. Temnikova didn’t really have that, you know. She was great with technique, she—”

  “The best,” her grandfather said, his gaze unemotional, steady.

  “Yeah, maybe, but kind of…cold.” She searched for what she meant. “The technique seemed detached from everything else. More what to do than why to do it, when—”

  “And you know better how this all should go?”

  “Dad,” Lucy’s mother said. “Let her finish.”

  “It’s just amusing to me that Lucy’s the expert now,” Grandpa Beck said.

  She met his eyes. He wasn’t unemotional any more. His face had reddened. She’d thought, for a while, that his anger over everything had passed, and his main feelings for her were disappointment and disinterest. Wrong. His rage was as fresh as it had been that day in Prague when she returned to the hotel.

  You entitled little brat. You ungrateful, careless…You think what you did honours your grandmother’s life? It disgraces her, Lucy.

  “I heard him practising with her every day,” she said. “I’ve gone to every performance I could. I know as much as you do.” She drew herself up, feeling the wood of the dining chair against her back. She tried to remember the quote, the Vladimir Horowitz one that Grace Chang had once written out for her that her grandfather knew and liked. It was at the tip of her memory.

  He laughed. “Oh, yes, I’m sure. How do you explain your brother’s success, if Temnikova was such a failure as a teacher?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Really, Stefan,” Lucy’s father said. “Enough.”

  “He’s better than everyone else his age. That doesn’t mean he’s as good as he can be.” Then she remembered how the quote went: “Brain, heart, and means. ‘Without heart, you’re a machine.’ Will has heart. I know it hasn’t been long, but you can tell that five seconds after you meet him. And that’s what I hear when he’s working with Gus.”

  Gus said, “Yeah.”

  Lucy wouldn’t look away from her grandfather’s stare – a silent continuation of that conversation in Prague.

  “I have to say,” her mother spoke in the tone she used when she wanted the su
bject changed – loud, cheery, “now that it’s getting out that we took Will on, I’ve yet to hear one negative word about him. And you know what a bunch of gossips these people are.”

  Yes, we know, Lucy thought.

  “We’ll see.” Grandpa Beck rose from the table. He had to steady himself on t

  he back of his chair for a second, but they all knew better than to express concern or offer help.

  “Goodnight, Grandpa,” Gus said.

  Lucy watched him walk out.

  Brain, heart, means. Her grandfather had two of those. When Grandma Beck died, he lost tiedp whe third. And Lucy worried that she had, too.

  On Monday Lucy still buzzed from the high of standing up to her grandfather.

  All of Sunday he’d acted like nothing had happened, that nothing was different. But she felt the shift. For so long she’d kept her mouth shut, believing his unspoken message: quitting had forfeited any claim she had on music.

  This isn’t allowed to matter to you any more.

  And she saw, now, that was bullshit.

  It did matter to her. Music. It had never stopped mattering.

  Imagine there is no Grandpa, Will had said.

  Impossible. To deal with piano, she’d have to deal with Grandpa. She’d stood up to him once, and she could probably do it again. But how many more times would it take?

  She would need help, from someone who understood.

  From the back seat of her mother’s car, on the way to school, she sent her first text to Will.

  Friend to friend. Ready to talk.

  She checked between every class for a reply. The more time that passed without one, the more she questioned herself. Really? You’re just going to start playing again as if it’s not that big a deal to your family?

  And questioned her questions: Stop thinking about them. Only you. And music. Or maybe it’s the attention you miss, like Reyna wondered.

  At lunch Reyna was telling Carson about coming to Lucy’s for Thanksgiving when Lucy finally got a text. She grabbed for her phone and smiled to see it was Will’s reply:

  I’ll be at the house tomorrow. Can you wait till then?