Doubters and Dreamers

Für Elise

20 Für Elise Why were they in tears by the end of their lessons, those red-faced young girls who, right after school, arrived at our house in their dresses or uniforms? They trudged up the several steps, sat on the squeaky piano bench, placed their fingers on the keys, and played “Für Elise,” while Mom beat out the tempo with a wooden ruler. I’d hear her counting, “One and two and three and four. Read the notes! Read the notes!” Mom whacked time on a stack of loose music piled atop the piano, a dark baby grand with massive carved legs. Poor girls. In the dining room across the hall, I tied reeds and scraped them down with precise tools for my oboe, practiced the Marcello, Handel, or Gluck. If I were bored, I’d get out my guitar and imagine myself 21 dressed in black, accompanying Baez, harmonizing on a folk tune. Upstairs, my younger sister might be practicing her flute. Those afternoons, our house hummed like a conservatory. At dusk, I’d go to the kitchen, start dinner—meatloaf or pot roast with onions and potatoes. If they burned, I would go out in the hall, open the wide front door, evacuate the smoke. Through the wavy glass of the French doors, I could see Mom standing above her student, a scorched look on her face. She’d purse her lips and, with her wrist, push back a shock of thick, salty hair that fell over her brow. Those girls would never defy our mom like we did, ignoring her demands and requests, never deafen themselves to the things that made her angry and bitter. I couldn’t help but feel 22 superior. Secretly I watched the child who, hunched and red-faced, would stare mulishly at the music, hands flat on the piano. Then she’d stumble dutifully through the Beethoven, over and over, tear-streaked, humbled. ...