A Thousand Perfect Notes

by C. G. Drews

  The Maestro folds her arms to stop her shaking hands. ‘It’s no crime to have something nice in your wardrobe.’

  ‘I’m hungry.’ Joey starts to wilt. ‘I’m so hungry.’

  ‘No lunch until we’re done here,’ the Maestro says.

  Joey folds her arms, bottom lip out.

  ‘But what are the clothes for?’ Beck grits his teeth, aware he’s spoken too loud.

  The ice in the Maestro’s eyes is warning.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbles. ‘But please …’

  The Maestro grabs Joey’s hand. ‘We’ll take them,’ she says, briskly.

  In the changing room, Beck whips off the clothes, cursing them and his mother, and even Joey for fraying the Maestro’s nerves when she was in a semi-good mood. He slips into his holey hoody and baggy jeans, rocking the homeless look, and then glares at the three full-length mirrors. Only a skinny, angry idiot scowls back.

  If she’s buying him nice clothes, maybe she plans to pack him off to Germany with or without Jan’s blessing. Maybe she’s happy because she can see the end of his irritating presence in sight.

  He stalks out and tosses the jeans, jumper and new white suit shirt in her basket. Her money. Who cares? She can waste it on some freaking clothes.

  They move towards the checkouts, both the Maestro and Beck taking turns to make sure Joey isn’t stuffing shiny items in her pockets.

  ‘There will be a lesson,’ the Maestro says, finally.

  ‘I thought it was a performance.’

  ‘Ja und nein. First there’s a performance at an acquaintance of Jan’s mansion. A small detour from his main tour.’

  Mansion? Rich people.

  ‘Then,’ the Maestro says, ‘a lesson. For Jan to assess you. We’ve spoken and arranged this.’

  ‘But—’ Beck stops. He shouldn’t carry on – but they’re in an open place. Not like she can slap him. ‘But I don’t want to go to Germany.’

  The Maestro appears not to have heard. She pauses by a rack of frilly little girl clothes. Glittery stockings and pink tees that say ‘Daddy’s Princess’. Currently, Joey’s wearing clothes from a second-hand sale – red jumper, polka dot leggings and pink glitter gumboots.

  ‘You do not understand the opportunity.’ The Maestro’s lips curl. ‘To learn from the greatest? To make something of yourself? You could be as great as me – perhaps. I thought you might try, Schwachkopf.’

  Beck flushes. ‘I’m your kid. You can’t just sell me—’

  The Maestro waves her hand sharply, done with him. ‘Take your sister and wait outside.’

  All he can do drag Joey towards the exit while she says, ‘It’s not fair, I didn’t get a present!’ with a five-year-old’s righteous indignation.

  ‘I know, Joey,’ Beck says, soothing. ‘It’s not fair.’

  He doesn’t want to do well at the performance. He doesn’t want to impress Jan.

  He doesn’t want to leave.

  The air smiles with winter teeth – an official welcome to time-for-your-hands-to-freeze-on-the-piano season. Joy.

  Beck stuffs his fingers beneath his armpits as he and August trudge to school. She’s jacketless and shoeless as usual, and mildly blue. She rubs her arms and bounces on the spot while Beck disappears into the noisy chaos of paint and dress-ups to bodily remove his little sister as she shouts at the teacher and stomps her small feet in fury. The teacher’s face is plum, and she’s ready to throw Joey at him. There’s also a letter.

  Joey’s been suspended.

  The preschooler has been suspended.

  Even Beck hasn’t fallen that low yet, though he’s never turned in complete homework in his life. No one expects much from him. But tossing the cherubic, big-eyed five-year-old out? He’s furious.

  ‘She’s a meanie,’ Joey howls, as Beck drags her out by the hood of her red coat. ‘She didn’t listen. I’m not a liar. I’m not! I’m a good girl.’

  Beck stuffs the letter into his backpack, half wishing he could rip it and toss the pieces in that pedantic teacher’s face.

  ‘What did you even do?’ August seems curious instead of shocked.

  ‘Who cares? No one should suspend a preschooler,’ Beck says, harsher than he intended.

  August commences a round of jumping jacks while Beck buttons Joey’s coat.

  ‘I got expelled from a preschool once,’ she says. ‘This kid found a bird half drowned in the water tank, so he used a plastic shovel to “put it out of its misery”. Seriously, the bird was not dead. He murdered it and had its blood on his shoes.’

  Joey’s eyes went wide. ‘What did you do?’

  August pauses and Beck isn’t sure if her cheeks are flushed with cold or embarrassment.

  When she doesn’t answer, he nudges her. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I might’ve bashed him with the same shovel,’ August confesses. ‘He might’ve had to get nine stitches. Look, I’m not proud of it. I retaliate peacefully now—’

  ‘Like with the frog,’ Beck reminds her, ‘and that guy you kicked.’

  August shrugs. ‘I possibly have a mild violent streak. At least the last dude didn’t have to get stitches. While I, on the other hand, lost a toenail and nearly bled dramatically to death.’

  Beck is actually impressed. August’s never going to be bulldozed in her righteous fights. She’ll be the one chained to a tree for three months to stop it being chopped down, or in prison for maiming hunters.

  They start off down the footpath, Beck in awed silence, August embarrassed and Joey with her head hung low in dejection.

  ‘All I did was call Bailey a Scheisskerl,’ Joey mumbles, ‘and then I bit her nose.’

  ‘You bit her?’ Beck’s jaw drops. ‘You’re not a baby, Joey. What is this?’

  ‘She said my mummy doesn’t love me because she never brings me to school!’ Joey says. ‘Then she broke my crayons. All of them. Even the glitter crimson. And I’m never, ever, ever going to get new crayons because – because …’ She stops, hiccupping through her tears.

  Because the Maestro won’t care enough to buy more. He knows. As much as the Maestro occasionally cares about Joey, she doesn’t lavish affectionate gifts on her. And Beck understands the specialness of glitter crimson since he got kicked for attempting to use it while colouring companionably with her.

  Beck is helpless in the face of justified rage. ‘You still shouldn’t have bitten her,’ he manages.

  August bounces over a crack in the cement footpath. ‘What would you have done, Beck?’

  Is she messing with him? He glances at her, but she looks serious, as if she’s genuinely unsure what the right thing to do in this devastating situation is. Maybe August sides with Joey.

  ‘Probably nothing.’ Beck isn’t proud of the answer. But what else can he say? He can’t encourage Joey, but he knows full well how incriminating Joey can look. Loud, brash, mouthy and physical? The teacher informed Beck that if his mother wouldn’t come in to talk about Joey’s long list of bad behaviours, then she had no choice but to suspend Joey.

  ‘EVERYONE IS MEAN TO ME!’ Joey wails. ‘Mama doesn’t love me, and Bailey is just a—’

  Beck covers her mouth. ‘Joey, please. August was innocent before we met her.’

  August nods. ‘Not any more. Joey’s got quite a tongue.’

  Joey tries to bite Beck’s hand, so he retracts.

  Beck claws deep inside himself for something encouraging to say, even though his mind is spinning to what the Maestro’s going to do with Joey when she has to work and Beck goes to school. ‘Well, Mama does love you.’ Definitely. A lot more than her son, anyway.

  After all, Joey hasn’t been forced on to the piano yet.

  She hunches in her coat. ‘Then I want new crayons.’

  August laughs. ‘You’re extraordinary, Joey. You really ought to be a superhero or the queen someday.’

  Joey considers this. ‘Superhero,’ she says. ‘I want to smash things.’

  She breaks into a run, pelting tow
ards the end of the street and into the Keverich hovel, slamming the front door after her. It gives Beck a moment of peace with August. Not that he needs it, of course. It’s just August. She’s just … some random school acquaintance.

  August is still smiling to herself, like Joey is the most glorious creation in the world. She rubs her hands together and blows on them. Beck wonders what it’d be like to hold her hand. Sweaty? Frozen? Would their fingers fit or would it be awkward?

  ‘Have you started writing my song?’ she says.

  He has. He’s also abandoned every rubbish attempt. He has to work on it in small sporadic bursts so the Maestro won’t notice it isn’t Chopin.

  Nothing he composes will be good enough for August.

  ‘No way,’ he says. ‘I told you, there is zero possibility of you hearing me play.’

  August sticks out her bottom lip – it’s slightly blue. ‘You break my heart, Keverich. How about dinner? Did your mum give the affirmative?’

  They haven’t even raised the subject since.

  He shrugs.

  ‘You’re talkative today,’ August says. ‘Something eating your brain?’

  Only a few things. Small things. He could be shipped off to Germany in a few weeks to live with an uncle who’s possibly worse than his mother. Or he could be strangled by the Maestro if he messes up. He could lose Joey. He could lose—

  He shrugs again.

  They pause on the driveway. The curtain flickers – Joey or the Maestro, he doesn’t know – and he can’t linger. But he wants to. Lingering isn’t half so awkward and emptying as saying goodbye.

  ‘Why do you always run?’ he blurts out suddenly. ‘After you leave here?’

  August looks startled. ‘What? Oh. I don’t know.’ She chews her lip. ‘To feel alive, I guess? Don’t you want to run after sitting in stuffy classrooms for six hours? Don’t you want to do something to remember that you are a person, not a test score?’

  No.

  Never.

  He wouldn’t even dare.

  ‘I guess.’ It doesn’t sound convincing even to him.

  He hates how innocent her face is, how her lips are twisted in a quiet smile, how her breath puffs in globes of cold white. He hates it because she is hope and tomorrow and he’s a goodbye and the end.

  She leans close, the warmth of her breath on his cheek – yeasty, because she ate sourdough bread for lunch after offering him a piece. He refused. His cornflake sandwich was so much better, obviously.

  ‘Write my song about being alive,’ she says.

  ‘It’s not going to have lyrics.’ Great. He just admitted he’s working on it.

  ‘What kind of song is it? Wait – oh wait.’ Her eyes sparkle wickedly, like she’s just eaten the best joke. ‘You don’t play classical piano, do you, Keverich?’

  ‘No,’ he growls.

  She tips back her head and hoots to the frosty sky. ‘Classical! My mum would be in love with you. Classical.’ She steps back, hands on her hips, and looks him up and down. ‘You are a scrawny, bitter, nasty classical pianist and I don’t know whether that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard or just the funniest.’

  ‘Ha, ha. I’m dying of laughter here.’

  Her eyes glint. ‘Someday I’ll do something extraordinarily spontaneous and you’ll learn how to smile.’

  ‘Yeah? Like what?’

  She whirls and Beck half expects wings made of frost and longing to sprout from her back and fly her home. He wants to catch her, pin the wings just for a second and ask to fly with her. Ask to be saved.

  ‘Oh, who could know?’ she shouts over her shoulder, running down the street. ‘Maybe I’ll kiss you.’

  She’s gone. The golden afternoon swallows her and leaves Beck at the end of his driveway more confused than if she’d slapped him.

  Did she mean it?

  Is she –

  no.

  They don’t have that kind of relationship. They’re barely friends now and she’s just messing with him, friend-to-friend style.

  Or she likes him.

  He cannot think about that.

  Realising he also can’t spend the rest of his day staring off down the street, he goes inside. It’s probably a throwaway remark. She probably kisses all the boys she meets, just to see how kissable they are. He wouldn’t be kissable. He’s piano keys and flinches and crumpled music trapped in his soul. Not kissable. Kickable.

  The Maestro is home. Worse, she’s actually cooking dinner. From the mounds of potato peels and the applesauce brewing on the stove, it must be Kartoffelpuffer – potato pancakes. A hot, homemade meal instead of frozen fish cakes for once?

  He stares for a minute as she struggles with a potato and a knife. It slips in her shaking hands and slices her finger. Cursing, she jams it in her mouth and turns to see him.

  ‘I can, um, peel them for you,’ Beck says.

  Surprisingly, the Maestro steps back and jabs a finger at the stack of potatoes. ‘Ja, be useful.’

  He could be a lot more useful around the house if he wasn’t practising the freaking piano all day.

  Beck dumps his backpack and remembers the letter. He’s betraying her, but what can he do? She’s five. Joey’s forgotten her disgrace and sits in front of the TV.

  ‘Um, this is from Joey’s teacher.’

  The Maestro raises her eyebrows and accepts it. Beck busies himself with the potatoes and knife and pretends not to notice how long it takes her to open it. Her hands have definitely gotten worse.

  She sucks in a sharp breath. ‘Verdammt nochmal. Johanna!’

  Joey slinks into the kitchen.

  ‘She said she bit some kid,’ Beck says.

  ‘Ja, and the teacher too.’ The Maestro looks shocked – an unusual change from her normal scowl. ‘She swore violently at a student and threatened them with scissors. Then bit the teacher intervening and hit repeatedly—’ The Maestro breaks off, nostrils flaring.

  Joey goes boneless and flops, face first, on the floor.

  Fear crawls into Beck’s throat. What if – no. The Maestro can’t possibly punish Joey when she is the reason Joey’s so violent. The Maestro has to see that, right? He ducks his head and peels potatoes fast.

  ‘This is not how you behave, Johanna.’ The Maestro slams the letter against the bench. ‘This is beschämend.’ Disgraceful.

  Joey raises her head a fraction off the tiles and gives a pterodactyl screech.

  The Maestro doesn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Go to your room, go on, naughty girl! No television. You stay in your room until dinner. Go.’

  Beck flips potato peels into the sink and tries not to sag with relief.

  Joey kicks her feet, but a few sharp words from the Maestro has her picking herself up and running in a whirlwind of childhood fury to her room. She slams her door.

  Beck hacks chunks off his potatoes. If the Maestro didn’t swear at him, Joey wouldn’t—

  ‘It is my fault,’ says the Maestro.

  Beck drops the knife and it clatters in the sink. He stares at her.

  The Maestro leans heavily against the bench, her enormous frame looking tired and completely done. Even her normally wild hair just droops about her ears.

  ‘If you didn’t try my patience so—’ The Maestro stops again and sighs deeply. Then she leans over the sauce and gives it a stir.

  Yes, blame him. Totally fair.

  Beck scoops the peel into the bin and starts to slink away, but the Maestro holds up a hand.

  ‘Wait.’

  Here it comes. A blasting because somehow everything is always Beck’s fault.

  ‘You and I need to talk – about this girl.’

  ‘Girl?’ Heat rises up Beck’s neck.

  Joey’s bedroom door pops open. ‘Do you mean August? August is my bestest of best friend. And she’s Beck’s girlfriend.’

  ‘To your room!’ the Maestro barks.

  Growling, Joey slams her door again.

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ Beck says, despera
tely. He’s not discussing this. Ever. With anyone. ‘There’s nothing—’

  ‘Bah.’ The Maestro hefts a huge knife from the drawer and starts slicing onions. ‘The window was open. I heard.’

  She’s spying on him? She controls his whole freaking life, and she needs to have this too?

  ‘She meets you for school every day,’ the Maestro goes on. ‘That girl is your fifth limb.’

  ‘She’s just a friend,’ Beck says, struggling to keep his voice even. ‘I want a friend. I’m practising—’

  ‘You call that schreckliche Lärm practising?’ The Maestro snorts, but at least these insults are usual and Beck doesn’t blink. ‘But this is not about practice.’ Her knife slams against the board. ‘Although friends are distractions from the piano, which is not good. Not good at all. When a boy distracted me, my career nearly collapsed – and I got pregnant with you.’ With a snick her knife beheads another onion.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Beck says bitterly.

  ‘Never mind that,’ the Maestro says, oblivious to the sarcasm. ‘The problem was the distraction. My music was nothing to me when he was on my mind. Notes disappeared and all I saw was his eyes, his smile.’

  This is the most she’s talked about Beck’s father.

  She slams the knife down. ‘He was too jealous of the piano, always too jealous. Even after my hands …’ Her voice roughens. ‘He did not come back, the Schwein. Those without music in their bones are not to be trusted.’

  No music? Sounds like paradise.

  ‘That girl,’ the Maestro says, ‘August. She does not love you. She loves broken things.’

  Beck’s eyes snap to hers.

  ‘It’s obvious, Schwachkopf.’ The Maestro scoops the chopped onions into a bowl. ‘The way she dresses, her hippy hair –’ she says it with a sneer ‘– the way she fawns over you.’

  ‘She doesn’t.’

  ‘Don’t be blind,’ she snaps.

  Emotion strains the Maestro’s voice, and Beck can’t understand it. He can’t understand this entire conversation.

  ‘She is the kind of girl,’ the Maestro says, ‘who falls in love with a broken toy, but once it’s fixed, she moves on. She wants to “save” you.’ She drips with bitterness. ‘No doubt you’ve painted me the monster. Well, fine. I shall be your monster. But I will also get you into the greatest concert halls in the world, get you the best tutor, make your name be known, make you a famous pianist who will want for nothing. Your little girlfriend will take that away.’