Consent (10 page)

I scan for clues to his personal life—family pictures, a book of love poems, a woman's scarf draped casually on the coat tree—but there is nothing.

Not that I should care. Since that time in his car, he has been very arm's-length with me, at least in that way. Mostly, he's acting like a very intense mentor/manager, trying to prepare me for my meeting with Annaliese.

He returns from the kitchen and sets a manly gray mug on the coffee table, next to an unfinished
New York Times
crossword puzzle. He has left 3 Down blank.
Romantic collaboration,
seven letters.

Liaison,
I think. Maybe before, I would have taken this to be a sign. A crossword puzzle in plain sight, a suggestive word. But I've come to see that signs don't mean anything, that their importance can be wildly inflated.

Oh, well. I guess I need a mentor/manager in my life right now, way more than a teacher/love interest.

Dane sits down next to me. I catch his familiar scent of eucalyptus and fresh soap and remember the stolen handkerchief, which is hidden away in my backpack. “I hope you like peppermint. I'm afraid it's all I have,” he says.

“I love peppermint. What did you mean, lose myself a bit?”

“What? Oh, yes, the Schumann. It's the opposite of the second movement, which is supposed to be very sharp and crisp. Militaristic. With the third movement, you need to let go of all that—sleepwalk, even.”

“How do I sleepwalk and play the right notes at the same time?”

“Once you know the piece well enough, your hands will automatically play the right notes. But your mind, your heart . . . you need to let them go to a deeper, more uncharted place. Wander off the map, if you will. The third movement is the culmination of Schumann's intense love and longing for his unattainable Clara.”

“It is?” I feel my cheeks flush as I reach for my tea. The mug is too hot, but I don't mind; it's a welcome distraction. “How did he . . . I mean, what is it about that movement . . . so I should aim for a more romantic-with-a-little-
r
mood?” I babble stupidly.

Dane picks up his empty coffee mug and studies it. “Did I ever tell you that Schumann wrote two endings for the Fantasy?”

“What? No. Two endings?”

“An original handwritten manuscript exists in which Schumann crossed out the first ending and replaced it with
a second ending. The second ending is the one most pianists play . . . the one you play.”

“Why did he do that?”

“No one knows for sure. Some people believe that the first ending was too personal for him to share. It contains a secret message of love that is meant only for Clara: a harmonic interval known as a descending fifth. That descending fifth was his code for her. In the second ending the descending fifth is gone.”

“So the second ending is
not
a message of love for her?” I ask, puzzled.

“The entire piece, in both incarnations, is a message of love for her. It even quotes themes from Beethoven's song cycle called
An die ferne Geliebte
—‘To the Distant Beloved.' The point is, the original ending of the Fantasy was a whole other level of private. Only Clara was supposed to understand it.”

We sit in silence as I sip my tea and he continues staring down at his coffee mug.

“Did they ever get together?” I ask after a while.

“Yes.”

“Was it happily ever after?”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh.”

“Their relationship was very . . . complex. Not straightforward.
That's what you must capture when you play that last movement.”

Complex. Not straightforward. Intense love and longing. Unattainable.

“No problem. I can handle that,” I say lightly.

We avoid looking at each other.

“I never see you anymore,” Plum complains as we walk to her house for a final SAT study session. The test is tomorrow, an all-day deal that will take place in the A-Jax cafetorium under the watchful eyes of multiple scary proctors. The trees on Lark Street blaze with red and gold, and early Halloween decorations hang in the windows: jack-o'-lanterns, silhouetted witches, tissue-paper ghosts.

“I've been crazy busy lately. I'm sorry,” I apologize.

“Is it your chamber thingy? Why do you guys have to rehearse so much?”

“Because we suck,” I lie. “The piece we're playing is really hard.”

“Is it Kit Harington, then? Is your secret romance blossoming, and you're keeping it from me?”

“No! There is no secret romance. We had our moment at
the café, but that was it. It's back to business now.” Which is not entirely a lie.

“Oh.”

“Hey, you and I are going to Boston next weekend!” I say brightly. “Go, maroon! Or go, magenta! Wait, what's the Harvard school color?”

“Crimson.”

“Right. Go, crimson!”

Plum frowns and turns to watch a little kid race by on his bicycle. It wobbles and then steadies. I wish I could tell her everything. About my Juilliard trip, which is happening in two weeks. About the private lessons with Dane. About all the extra practicing I've had to do, to prepare. But I can't, not until after I'm back from New York City. If nothing comes of it, then I won't even mention it to her. If something does come of it, and I change my mind about going to a conservatory . . . well, I'll
have
to tell her, obviously, and we can have a big drama about it then.

Although I can't imagine that I will change my mind.

And even if I did, like I could ever get into Juilliard.

The boy zips by on his bike again. For a second I flash back to when I learned to ride one. Dad actually taught me, over a couple of Sundays, on the rare occasions when he acted like a normal dad. When I was finally able to pedal on my own
without him holding on, he took a picture with his phone. He probably deleted it by accident afterward.

When Plum and I reach her front yard, she steps gingerly across the stone path instead of hopscotching like we usually do.
Ouch.
“Are you staying for dinner? Or do you have somewhere you need to be later?” she asks glumly.

“I wouldn't miss sushi from Tokyo Palace!” I say, forcing a smile.

“You missed it last week. You've missed most of our dinners lately. Mommy's been asking where you are.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It was Shakespeare's birthday on Tuesday. You missed that, too.”

“I'm really, really sorry.”

Inside, Mrs. Sorenson is waiting for us in the hallway. “Darlings!” she wraps her arms around us and kisses our heads. “How was your day? Are you all ready for the SATs tomorrow? Bea, sweetheart, we've missed you.”

“I know, Mrs. Sorenson. I'm sorry I haven't been around.”

“No worries. It's such a treat to see you. Pernilla told us about your trio. We're so looking forward to hearing you at the Christmas concert!”

“The
holiday
concert, you mean,” Plum corrects her. “Where's Daddy?”

“He's still in L.A. He'll be
home tomorrow. Now, you girls go relax or study or whatever you want to do while I make us a fruit salad.”

Mrs. Sorenson smiles and pulls her hair back with a clip as she pads toward the kitchen. Plum and I take our backpacks upstairs. Shakespeare is napping on the second-floor landing. He opens one eye, thumps his tail, and goes back to sleep.

Inside her room, Plum and I tackle a couple of SAT worksheets while listening to Adele on her computer. When “Set Fire to the Rain” comes on, I automatically think:
Key of D minor.
Mrs. Sorenson brings up a wooden bowl filled with mango slices, raspberries, and mint leaves. She hugs us again before leaving to pick up our sushi from Tokyo Palace.

Everything is the same and yet not the same. Plum is upset with me. I'm lying to her more than usual. I want things to go back to where they were, before Dane . . . but I know that's not possible, at least not until I've put this Juilliard pipe dream, detour, whatever behind me.

Telling lies used to make everything easier. Now it's the opposite. What is happening to me?

Thankfully, the mood is lighter at dinnertime. The table, set for three, is as festive as ever. Garlands of bittersweet surround clusters of white votive candles. Mrs. Sorenson lets Plum and me have some Japanese wine in tiny porcelain cups. As we
eat, she tells us stories about her and Mr. Sorenson's Princeton days.

“I met him the fall of my freshman year. He was a graduate student. I was on my way to the bookstore and was just about to walk through FitzRandolph Gateway, which is one of the gates on Nassau Street, the main street. All of a sudden, your father appears out of nowhere and pulls me away. I didn't know this at the time, but it's a tradition for students to wait until graduation to exit through that gate. Otherwise, it's bad luck. I was a bit shaken up—you know, having a strange young man grab me and all that. He insisted on taking me out for coffee. The rest, as they say, is history.”

As I listen, I tip back the Japanese wine, which burns pleasantly down my throat. I try to picture Plum and me at college together: sharing a dorm room, strolling across an ivy-covered campus, meeting smart boys. It's such a perfect picture, and I wish I could get excited about it.

And then I picture me in New York City, majoring in piano performance at Juilliard. Dane could visit and come to my recitals . . .

Maybe it's not a mere pipe dream after all. He has unleashed something in me—not just romantic-with-a-small-
r
yearnings, but that part of me which was hidden away and buried for so long. Music.

Plum watches me from across the table. Her eyes look sad and also a little drunk. My heart sinks; does she know? Has her best-friend sixth sense intuited that a part of me may leave her? May have already left?

When I get home that night, Cream Puff greets me at the door with an angry yowl, like she's way overdue for a meal. Obviously, I spaced on her breakfast this morning; I've been a bad cat-mom lately.

I head for the kitchen, clicking on lights along the way. My head is still a little fuzzy from the Japanese wine. The curtains are open, and the windows stare out at blackness: black sky, black woods, black asphalt—it's all the same in this place. The only sign that Dad may have been here earlier is a pizza box on the coffee table along with a pile of manila folders. His last trial wrapped up in late September, and he's starting a new trial now—a murder case, I think, which is rare for Eden Grove. The most exciting things that happen around here are shoplifting, domestic incidents, and once, during the Super Bowl, some old guy shooting his TV set with a hunting rifle.

In the kitchen I bang open cupboard doors in search of cat food. I find a brand-new ten-pound bag of Kitty Feast that Hannah must have picked up. Cream Puff circles my ankles as I pour the kibble into her bowl. Dad hasn't made me kick her out yet; he's probably forgotten about her existence, which is par for the course for him.

My phone buzzes with an incoming call. Dane's number flashes on the screen. I perk up and hit Talk.

“Hi!”

“Am I ringing too late?”

“No, it's fine. I'm feeding Cream Puff.” I reach down to pet her, but she's way more interested in her food.

“Sorry, what is a Cream Puff?”

“She's my . . . she's a cat.”

“Ah! I adore cats. My cat, Mr. Bumble, is still with us—or rather, with my family back in London. He's nearly twenty now.”

“Twenty! Wow.”

“So how are you?”

“I'm fine.”

Actually, I'm better than fine, because Dane has never called me before. We usually just text each other to arrange for lessons and such. Talking to him on the phone, late on a Friday night, seems so intimate—even more intimate than being in
his house. But I don't articulate any of this because I don't want to sound cloying. Or stupid. Or stalkerish.

“So listen, I just spoke to Annaliese. She needs to change the date of your appointment in New York. Would that be all right?” he is asking me.

“Sure.”

“Great. It turns out Annaliese has to be in Texas on the nineteenth to adjudicate a competition. She's filling in for another judge. Quite by chance, one of her students had to cancel his recital next Saturday. I convinced her to meet with you then.”

Next Saturday?
“Wait! That day's no good. Is there another day she can see me?”

“What's wrong with the twelfth?”

“I'm going to Boston with Plum.”

“You must postpone it, then.”

“I can't. She's been planning this forever. We're visiting colleges.”

“Sorry, you didn't mention . . . I wasn't aware that you were . . . Which colleges?”

“Like Harvard, a bunch of other schools. I don't remember exactly.”

Silence.

“Beatrice, are
you
interested in those schools?”

“I don't know. Maybe?”

“Maybe.”
Another silence. “Listen to me. You can visit Harvard and so forth anytime. But you may not get another opportunity to play for Annaliese. It's very difficult to get an audience with her. She almost canceled this meeting altogether. Needless to say, she's extremely in demand.”

“But—”

“It's up to you. I can't force you to go. You must decide what your priorities are.”

“Yes, but—”

“Do
you
want to go to Boston next weekend?”

I sigh.

“Beatrice?”

“Okay, fine! No, I don't want to go, except for the hanging-out-with-Plum part.”

“Do you want to play for Annaliese?”

“Y-yes.”

“Good. It's settled, then. I'll let Annaliese know.”