My Beautiful Hippie (16 page)

I sighed, rolled over, and squeezed my pillow tight against my body, pretending it was Martin. I loved Martin, and he loved me, but I knew I was the only one of us “in love.” It was true what I said to Dan: Martin was not my boyfriend. He could not be possessed. I didn't know how he spent his time when he wasn't with me; I didn't want to know. Martin just had to be free. That was all anybody ever talked about. Even the Monkees had a song about it, “I Wanna Be Free.” I didn't want to be free. I wanted to belong to Martin, and I wanted him to belong to me.

My first scheduled performance at master class was drawing near. Musically, I was as ready as I could be; I had known my whole
“Pathétique”
sonata by heart for over three months. Physically, I was a wreck. On the outside, I appeared to be the same as usual, but somehow the core of my body knew I was performing. I had diarrhea. Occasionally I broke out in shivers.

What, really, was a memorized piece? I couldn't see it or touch it or explain it. It consisted of scales and chords and rote motor motions. Whenever I was on the verge of forgetting, I felt it first in my fingers: some minute motion was not the same as I had practiced, a slip off a key or a miscalculated sweep of the arm. Sometimes a sound such as rattling silverware in the kitchen blocked the information that flowed from brain to fingers. It was a dicey operation, when I was hoping for perfection.

Mom was in a dither about her upcoming Thanksgiving dinner, and already she was churning the wheels of the massive assembly line that would crank out over two hundred Christmas cards. Arriving home from school, I would find her at her desk in the den, amid several TV trays piled with stationery, photographs, stamps, and Christmas seals. Relatives and closest family friends merited a handwritten letter and photographs of us kids, other friends rated just the letter, and the neighbors and Dad's business associates got “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
from Dick, Helen, Dan, and Joanne,” written with a flourish in my mother's finest penmanship. It was sad that Denise, a married woman now, was excluded this year, as if there had been a death in the family.

The day of the class arrived, and I discovered I was last on the program. While the other three students performed, the seat I had saved next to me for Martin remained empty. When it was finally my turn, I feared my legs would collapse under me on my walk to the front of the room. Seated at the piano, I raised my hands to play and felt that the bench was too high. I was too nervous to crank it down, but Dr. Harold stopped me to adjust the bench himself. Little titters of laughter rose in the room, which set me at ease. All my peers in the studio were with me, hoping I would play well. The door opened and closed and light footsteps tapped across the hardwood floor. Without looking up, I knew that Martin was with me, too.

I sank the weight of my arms into the first, tragic C minor chord. The action of the piano was stiff, which would make it harder to articulate fast runs, and the vast room, with its vaulted ceiling and those hardwood floors, caused the sound to bounce around and confuse my ears. I made it through the first page, then flubbed the first run. That's okay, I thought. Now I no longer needed to worry about making the first mistake. But I continued to make mistakes, so that the development section was an absolute tangle. The worst is over, I thought at the end of the first movement. I settled comfortably into the slow, melodious second movement, and even the triplet section with the bumpy thumb accompaniment turned out smooth. Then, in the third movement, I forgot. My hands frantically roved over the keyboard, not knowing where I was in the music or how to pick it up again. I started the section over, and with shaking fingers managed to complete my performance. It was over, and I had made a mess of it.

The audience applauded politely, except for one person, who cupped his palms to clap the loudest and the longest, a sweet gesture by Martin that increased my embarrassment. Dr. Harold
began to discuss my performance and asked me to try various techniques in several sections. I responded woodenly, with a frightened grin stretched across my face. Finally, mercifully, the session was over. I rose from the piano, walked down the aisle, snatched my music satchel from my seat, and, looking straight ahead, scurried out the door and plunged down Nob Hill.

I heard running footsteps behind me. “Joni! Joni! Wait up!” Martin rushed to my side and put his arm around me, slowing me down by cupping my shoulder in his hand. “Wow! You really blew my mind!”

Of course he would say that. He had an untrained ear, and he wished the best for me. “I forgot,” I said in a flat, angry tone. “Three whole seconds passed and I didn't play a note. I had to start the section over, and did you hear how I missed some of the runs? Oh, Martin, I forgot!” Finally the tears I had been holding back burst forth.

He held me, his forehead pressed against mine. “Don't be so hard on yourself, Joni. You had soul! There were sparks of genius!”

I pulled my head away from his. “Just sparks?”

“Well, yeah. Here and there. When you were able to forget you were in the spotlight and the audience melted away, and it was just you in the music. Do that all the time, and you'll be great.”

“Yeah?” I said hopefully. Trained or untrained, Martin was a natural musician, and I was not.

“You care too much what people think of you. Forget 'em. Do your own thing.”

“But how?”

“You've got to live in the moment. You've got to live like everything matters and nothing matters, all at the same time.”

I knew this was some of his I Ching mumbo jumbo. “That makes no sense.”

“You can care a lot, but when things don't work out like you hoped, just accept it, and try again the next time.” He framed my face in his hands and wiped my tears away with his thumbs.
He smiled at me sadly, then kissed me. “I'm glad I finally got to hear you play. It was beautiful. You're beautiful, Joni.”

When I got home, my mother hailed me from the den. “How did it go, Joanne?”

I ignored her. I sat at the piano and played my Beethoven straight through nearly flawlessly. Why I couldn't do that at master class, I didn't know.

At my next lesson, Dr. Harold didn't say anything about my performance, and I didn't mention it. I handed him my Beethoven, and he said, “Let's start with the Chopin nocturne today.”

After that, he spent nearly a half hour helping me voice my Bach fugue. Time was running out. As he was wrapping up on Bach, I reached for my sonata again.

“I want you to give Beethoven a rest,” he said.

“I can't! I'm going to play it next month on the Palace of Fine Arts program.”

“Joanne, I'm taking you off that program.”

I dropped my head and felt a tear trickle down my nose. It was humiliating to cry in front of my teacher, but the disappointment was too great.

“I'm sorry. I had reservations when I saw you sign up for the program. I should have said something then. Then at master class—”

“I was horrible, wasn't I?”

“Not at all. You had some dazzling moments.”

It was exactly what Martin had said, but it was no consolation. I felt my shoulders shaking with my sobs. I wouldn't be performing at the Palace of Fine Arts after all, and I was too devastated to move. Dr. Harold handed me a Kleenex.

“I bet you're sorry you have me as a student.”

“I'm honored to have you for a student, Joanne,” he said quietly. “Put the musicians on the top of the ladder and the technicians on the bottom, and you'll find yourself several rungs higher. It would be wrong of me to allow you to perform in public before you're ready.”

“I could get ready if you'd let me,” I said hopefully. “I could practice more, hours and hours.”

“You're giving Beethoven a rest,” he said firmly. “I've got something for you.” From his filing cabinet he removed a thin, yellow Schirmer publication. “I'm assigning you a new piece.”

I read the front cover:
RAVEL SONATINE
. It sounded like “saltine.” “Who's
Rav
el?”

“It's Ra
vel
.”

“Who's that?”

“You're about to find out. Beethoven's “
Pathétique
” is a very popular piece, you know. Several of my students are working on it, but this piece is just for you. I'm going to ask you not to listen to any recordings. I want you to make this piece your own.”

I opened it up to a swirl of complicated sixty-fourth notes. The third movement was ten pages long and marked “
Animé
.” I knew enough French to know that meant fast. The Ravel looked hard, hard, hard. Another thing to fail at.

I wiped my eyes and stood. Dr. Harold must have had a schedule change, because waiting at the door was Suyu. I watched the way he smiled at her. It was not how he looked at me. She was special to him, his star, while I was just a blubbering goof-up.

When I got home, I threw the Ravel on top of the piano with the mess of music there. Then I went into the den, where my mother was, and burst into tears again as I told her what had happened at my lesson.

“I don't understand your Dr. Harold at all. First he tells you you can play at the Palace of Fine Arts, and then he goes back on his word. He's not being the least bit fair to you.”

I didn't correct her by saying I had signed up to play without his saying anything about it.

“Heavens, Joanne! I never should have agreed to your taking lessons from him.” She waved her hand at the stack of cards, addressed and stamped, waiting to be mailed. “Do you realize how many people I've told about your performance? I've already mailed a hundred cards!”

* * *

I didn't sleep well; I had nightmares about performing. In one dream the keys on the piano were rearranged so that I couldn't find the ones I needed. In another, the audience held a program of pieces I had forgotten to practice. The night before Thanksgiving, I woke up and began to play Beethoven's
“Pathétique”
sonata in my mind. I got out of bed, put on my bathrobe, and crept downstairs. I sat at the piano, lit by the streetlight, and went through the motions of playing over the tops of the keys. A few times I accidentally sounded a note, but very softly.

I started, having spotted out of my peripheral vision a ghostly figure perched on the edge of the sofa. It was my mother, in her nightgown, her face glistening with cold cream and her hairnet stuffed with Kleenex to prevent her weekly beauty-parlor bubble from flattening out in her sleep.

“Joanne,” she said forlornly, “it's the middle of the night.”

“Sorry. I was just checking this one part.”

“Allowing you to take piano lessons from Dr. Harold was a mistake. It's too much for you. You're too high-strung. I can't bear to see my own daughter so unhappy.”

“But, Mom, these have been the happiest three months of my life!”

“If you think this is happiness, you're headed for a miserable life! I worry you'll never be able to settle down like your sensible sister and be content with everyday life.”

I swiveled to face her. “Mom! I am content! I love my life and the piano and Dr. Harold, and if you take that away from me I'll die!”

Mom sighed. “I'm not suggesting you quit piano. I only think that if you go back to Mrs. Scudder—”

A clatter from the back porch caused the house to shake like an earthquake had struck.

“The turkey!” Mom exclaimed in horror. Snoopy must have knocked down our Thanksgiving turkey, wrapped in tea towels and thawing on the washing machine.

We both ran through the kitchen onto the back porch to find a drunken Dan, sprawled on the linoleum amid a half dozen broken flowerpots, plants, and dirt. Dan struggled to find his feet and fell back on his butt before hurling chunks down the front of his jacket.

I looked at Mom. “And you're worried about me?”

Thanksgiving was a dreary day, pouring rain. Mom complained that I had missed some spots of tarnish when I had polished the silverware and had slathered too much pimento cheese spread on the celery sticks. I wasn't quite certain what she meant when she called me high-strung, but I was pretty sure I'd inherited the trait from her. As soon as Jerry and Denise arrived, Mom banished me from the kitchen, exclaiming that I was “underfoot,” but I knew it was only so she could rant to Denise about my recent failure as a pianist.

I wandered into the den, where Dad, Dan, and Jerry were watching the Forty-Niners, leaning forward on their seats, clutching the necks of their beer bottles, and hooting and hollering. I didn't understand why it was so crucial that grown men knocked each other down in various formations and I didn't care, but Martin had once speculated that without football there would be a lot more war.

I sauntered over to Mom's desk and read one of the Christmas cards she had lying open.

Dear Ralston and Valentine,