"Music Lesson" by Martha Lacy Hall

University of Illinois Press

Copyright &COPY 1970, 1979, 1980, 1983, 1994 by Martha Lacy Hall

ISBN 0-252-01129-5

For two days and nights she had studied the acoustical tiles in the
ceiling of the hospital room, trying to decide if they were all alike -
poured into a mold of one design. There was no symmetry. Did the
small and large decimal points curve and loop in a common pattern?
This time she decided they did. And yet . . . For a moment she let
her eyes go out of focus and see nothing. She thought, In God's
name, where am I going to get some money?
The blocks were uneven and poorly installed. He would notice that
eventually. Engineer. Perfectionist. He hated slipshod work, and he
never accepted any. At a party one night she'd overheard a building
contractor call him just another overeducated nitpicking sonofabitch.
She'd told him later and he'd laughed.
"Well, what do you think?" he said as he slid the long zipper down
her back.
"Well, I don't think you're overeducated." Laughter. "Evan! You're
cracking my ribs!" Laughter.
"Let's go to New Orleans and make love all weekend."
"We don't have to go to New Orleans, silly." Laughter. Laughter.
What had been so funny?
Nothing had been very funny lately. Notes from those years of fun
and laughter sounded in her head, andante-three beautiful children
with their clear blue eyes, shining hair, straight, perfect bodies, Easter
clothes, vacations at the Gulf Coast, camp, bandaged bobos, and,
always, Evan. More real and more recent was the memory of the
past year, with conversations ending not in laughter but on strange
notes. He'd become irritable, distracted-tired, worried, she now
knew-a different Evan who could snap, "I don't see what the hell
difference it makes," leaving her cut off and angry. Left to her own
lonely thoughts, she'd gradually concluded that a good many things
no longer made a hell of a difference-things that had once seemed
all important. If only . . .
Her eyes traveled along a fine crack down the pale green wall.
The crack disappeared behind the glistening oxygen tent - her hus-
band in a lopsided corsage box. A large machine that seemed primi-
tive hissed beside the bed, reminding her of a window air-condition-
ing unit. They'd never had a window unit. Only central systems in
both the houses they'd built. He hated the sound of a window unit -
and the draft. They were inefficient and costly to operate. Better
a palmetto fan, he'd said.
She watched the still face. He wasn't unconscious; he was asleep,
and he snored gently and naturally. Surely he would not die. He must
not. What was his heart doing? A strange red thing, like something
from a meat market, throbbing capriciously in his chest, giving life,
taking life. The mindless heart, the heartless heart. Her mouth was
dry, and her stomach began to feel rigid again. Her breath quick-
ened as she fought the fear that had kept welling up within her since
she had come with him into the hospital. The nightmare of the
screaming ambulance that whipped them through the streets-streets
that flashed by like a hideous kaleidoscope.
She laid her palm up against the wall, looked at the back of her
hand, watched the veins disappear and her hand turn creamy and
pale, the blood draining down through her wrist, into her arm. She
raised her hand higher, above her head, to let the blood run down
through her arm and shoulder, into her strong and perfect heart.
During the first few hours she had even hoped Evan's heart attack
was a dream. Soon, perhaps, she would wake up and begin to move
and feel the cool, smooth sheets of her own bed beneath her, the
plump, firm support of her pillow under her shoulders, neck, head.
But there was no gasp of relieved awakening, only the numbing in-
sistence of the truth.
Coronary.
Arterial block, ventricular infarction. Fibrillation. She had resisted
the definitions of the ugly words, at first a jumble of confusion and
terror in her mind. Pacemaker. Very possible, said the cardiologist.
How does it work? He had explained that the tiny device would be
pushed down through the jugular vein, into a ventricle. But Evan's
veins are so small he's never even been able to give a transfusion.
My dear, he's stable now. Let's see what happens during the next
seventy-two hours. Three days. Two had passed.
She'd left the hospital once, to go home to see about the children.
Daddy's going to be all right. While there she discovered, in his mail
and in his desk, overdue notices on bank loans and a stack of unpaid
bills. A current overdraft notice. The whole story in sixty seconds.
The precoronary collection of Evan Phelps. She'd picked up the
phone, automatically, and called his secretary. Julia reminded her
that her husband's partner was still vacationing in Europe. "I'm sorry,
Mrs. Phelps. There just isn't any money on hand. Things couldn't
be much worse right now. I'm so sorry.
What? What do you mean? But it wasn't Julia's problem.
Now she fingered the textured leather of the prayer book Alice
had brought her and stared at the thirty-first Psalm, the page a gray
blur. She thought, I have to have some money. Now. But from
where?
Listen Moonlight Sonata." "The Scarf Dance." Dvorak,
Ravel. "Practice," her mother had said. "You just don't practice
enough. You could play as well as your sister, you know." She prac-
ticed, but she never played as well as Delia and a lot of other people
who were forever having recitals in taffeta dresses, curtsying and
smiling to applause, dropping their eyes to proud parents on the front
row. She remembered some of her recitals, and felt the first tinge
of amusement she'd had in days.
Yet Father gave her the Steinway. Delia had one.
"A house must have a piano," he'd said matter-of-factly. And a
typewriter and a few other things-closed bookcases. Dust and
Louisiana dampness ruined books and pianos. This before air con-
ditioning.
The doctor had sounded fatherly. "My dear, get Evan some nurses.
Go home and get some rest." Go home. She drifted back and forth
between the fright of now and the pleasant intrusions of the past.
Delia had once hung a fringed paisley shawl over the piano. The
crystal prisms of the lamp shimmered when she played Rachmani-
noff. She stared at the unfamiliar stubble on Evan's chin. Why' didn't
he tell me about these debts? Why did he let us go on spending?
A few thousand dollars would pay bank interest until the disability
insurance started. No, she needed more than that. There were
groceries and utility bills.
The doctor had murmured vaguely, "Three months-possibly
four, if ... If?
Three months. I haven't played in a year, she thought. I can still
read music pretty well. But I couldn't teach; I should have practiced.
The piano crowds the living room. But Father said every house.
Father is dead. Father has been dead for years.
Her candelabra shone in the light of red candles at Christmastime.
The parties. The singing. The keyboard gleamed creamy white, like
new. The tone, ah. But everyone thinks his piano has a glorious tone.
Suddenly she rose from the rumpled cot where she had lain stiffly,
listening and watching, for two nights. "I'm going to use the tele-
phone," she said softly to the floor nurse who had come in. "Please
stay with him. I'll be right back."
She moved along the polished floor of the long hall. Gleaming
reflections swam by her on tile walls, enameled ceiling, lights. An
underwater tunnel-as in Mobile. A window would help this place
enormously.
The telephone was still warm from the previous user, a tall young
black man in a bright blue robe. She wondered what his trouble was;
every time she'd wanted to call home he was at the pay phone talk-
ing animatedly. To his girlfriend, maybe, telling her about his tests.
What the doctor said. The waiting room smelled of fresh paint, and
Dutch Boy wet paint signs hung about. The pages of the phone book
were curled up at the corners-worn out by people like herself,
calling.
"Classified." The voice on the other end startled her.
We used Dutch Boy in our first house. They said it would clean
well. It did, too. But the living room was too green. She spoke articu-
lately to the voice, but her head seemed full of ancient things com-
ing on in little waves that would not stop.
"How many lines did you want, ma'am?"
Mother didn't let that scarf stay on the piano for long. She said
it was too shiny. The fringe was pale gold and long and silky.
Mother's fingers were firm on the keys. Blue veins stood out on her
hands, sprinkled with pale freckles, and her engagement ring would
turn loosely as she played till the diamond, in a high setting, rattled
on the keys. She sat erect, and her right foot always seemed poised
above the pedal, her shin standing out. Did Mother really know
Liszt? Mother never doubted herself. She just sat down when she
pleased and played as she pleased. Then she would get up and go
on to other things. Would Mother have panicked if Father had had
a heart attack?
"You won't need to say for sale. It will be in that column." A soft
voice.
A deep voice. "Every house needs a piano, honey. And a Merriam-
Webster." Or Webster-Merriam. Mother ground coffee when she was
a little girl on the farm in Copiah County, Mississippi. You couldn't
look up at the mill on the wall; coffee got into your eyes. She shut
her eyes.
Elise would say, "For heaven's sake. What happened to your
piano?" Elise would know, but she'd ask.
Alice would say, "Darling, what a fabulous idea to get rid of that
monster. Now you can put in a nice old chest or something." She
would know, too. Everyone must know Evan is broke.
He can't die. Oh, God, she thought, what was that Psalm where
Alice had laid the ribbon? In Thee, 0 Lord, do I put my trust. What
would he say when he was taken home and saw it was gone? Well,
after all, it was her piano. She imagined: "But your piano! How could
you do it? Do you realize what it will cost to replace a Steinway?"
Replace it? Darling, who needs it?
"How many days do you want to run the ad?"
If I can get two thousand for it, I can manage. 1 know 1 can. If
I can just get him . . .
"Ma'am, you don't need to say piano; just say Steinway."
Dust motes flew around, going nowhere in the beam of sunlight
that struck the piano. Do re mi fa sol la ti do. She liked the finish
on the metronome better than the piano's. She studied the walnut
patina. A bordered Axminster underfoot in the wintertime. In
summer the sun glowed on bare polished pine floors, and silk pongee
curtains slid lightly on wooden rings and bulged into the room on
every breeze. Damp spring air made the keys stick. Mr. Broussard
could fix that, but he couldn't play anything. He just sat there with
a neat little tool kit open beside him, making chords and cocking
his head. On cold winter nights the fire in the coal grate glowed on
the dark wood, and the heat caused the piano's finish to craze. It
felt rough. Where had father bought it? It had always been there
in the living room, like everything else. Mother and Father never
bought anything. Mother didn't "decorate." How pretty that grate
had been-iron and fancy, glowing as red as the coals. Her shins
would smart when she got too close, and she would keep edging back
on the rug till the coals burned down.
"Run it for four days, please. Yes, thank you."
It was fun to let her fingers slide off the black keys. Da-dum. Da-
dum. The bench had club feet, and dust collected there. She would
slip her feet out of her shoes and stretch her legs around to dust them
with her toes. When the bench got full of Etudes, sheet music, and
exercise books, she would go through them and clean it out, so the
top would fit down properly. Mother hated edges of music sticking
out.
"Bill me." She gave the address and hung up the clammy green
receiver, its metal cord coiling instantly, snakelike. As she turned
away the phone rattled. Her coin had come back.
She started down the hall to his room. What if no one wants to
buy it? Can I sell it for less? No, I won't give it away. She avoided
the green tiles, stepping only on the white. Her shoes were nearly
the length of the squares. She stopped. A puddle of dark blood larger
than a dinner plate lay on the floor. Two attendants were rolling
an empty stretcher with rumpled green sheets out of a room. One
man stepped back into the blood, then they pushed the stretcher
toward the elevator, leaving heelprints of somebody's blood on the
floor. She moved past, her hand clutching the coin in her pocket.
Jamie said you could see Lincoln's statue between the columns of
the memorial when a penny was new. Was he kidding?
Passing the nurses' station, she looked at each face apprehensively.
All of them returned her nervous smile with benign, noncommittal
stares, much like the squares of ivory tiles behind them. But the
nurses had been kind. They saw women like her every day, scared-
faced women having their first crisis, their emotions moving between
calm and panic.
Silently she pushed the heavy door open and nodded the waiting
nurse Out. Evan's eyes were open, watching her till she stood beside
him. He put his hand out and pulled her hand into the cold tent and
kissed her fingers with cold lips. "1 was just wondering something."
His voice sounded-thin.
"I was just wondering how many miles you and I have danced
together."
Laughter hung in her throat. "About a million miles-so far."
"How are the kids? The nurse said you were at the phone."
"They're fine. Jean and Delia are coming to see you - in a few
days-and Jamie says to tell you he's moving into his tree house till
you come home." They smiled. She tucked his hand under the sheet
and sealed the edges of the tent with the sheet as she had seen the
nurses and doctors do. She stood looking at him as he closed his
eyes again.
You'd never dream what I've done.
She sat down on the cot and leaned back against the hard wall.
She was disappointed to feel the pang of resentment. She'd hoped
she wouldn't. It lasted barely long enough for her to recognize it.
Then it was gone, like a ghost that didn't wait around to be exorcised.
The piano would sell. Several burly men would come, turn it on its
side, take it out the front door, and lay it in a van on quilted pads.
Then they would come back for the legs and their screwdriver. The
big brass casters would leave three packed-down places in the carpet,
but she was confident that a good brush and a little time would
restore the pile.