The Lucy Variations

by Sara Zarr

  “I understand,” she said. “I know you think I don’t. But I do.”

  They sat in the car, quiet, only the street noise around them.

  “Hey,” he said, making his voice bright, “I have a little Christmas present for you. Do you want it now?”

  “Yeah!” She matched his tone. “I have something for you, too, only I didn’t bring it.”

  He smiled, then reached into the back seat and produced a flat package. She tore off the wrapping. It was a notebook, covered in dark red leather.

  “Open it,” he said.

  It was filled with music manuscript paper. And there was a pen loop and a pen.

  “Martin helped me. I told him I wanted a special pen for a special person. And he knew where to get the best paper.”

  She ran her hand over the smooth, blank pages. “Thank you.”

  “Maybe, when you get to school, you’ll enjoy doing some of your own arrangements. Or even composing. You could. You have such a great ear.”

  “Thank you.” She closed the book and turned to him for a hug. A thank-you hug.

  “You’re going to do great tomorrow,” Will said.

  And, like she had the last time, she held on. This time it was her lips, not her fingers, that found his neck and rested against it. For a second. Two seconds. Feeling warmth, feeling the fine hairs. He made circles with his hands on her back.

  They stayed like that, until Lucy got out and ran back home across the park.

  Spinning. Cold. Ready.

  What am I doing?

  Lucy sat in the front row with all the other musicians who would play that night. The concert hall, overheated and filling with people, had been decorated with holiday lights that cast a warm yellow glow over everything.

  Cosy, if you weren’t fifteen minutes away from being on stage for the first time in almost a year.

  The ride to Davies had been quiet, the family divided up into two groups: she came with Gus and her dad, because she didn’t want her grandfather to stress her out, and because her grandfather refused to ride in her dad’s small car. She’d thought about calling a cab, to avoid her family entirely, but she wanted to show Gus that though he was still mad at her, she didn’t feel the same towards him.

  Martin would be in the audience. Convinced Reyna hated her, she’d been too nervous to text her again. But she’d invited Carson and hoped he’d tell Reyna, but she didn’t know if they’d come.

  Their dad had dropped them off so he could go park the car. Outside, Lucy’d taken Gus by the shoulders and forced him to look at her. His curls were gone, per Grandpa’s instructions. “You’re already in your suit and probably don’t want this, but…” She pulled the little bow tie out of her dress pocket, the same pocket that held Will’s nail clippers, for good luck. “You could be like a mini Grandpa.” She wiggled it at him, hoping for a smile.

  “I don’t want to be like him.” He’d totally lost all sense of humour.

  “You’re not,” she said, shoulders sagging. “You won’t be. It’s a joke.”

  Gus started to walk away; she wouldn’t let him. “Gus. You are amazing. Be amazing tonight. I love you no matter what.”

  His eyes knifed into hers. “You took him,” he said. “After you said you wouldn’t.”

  She dug through all the things she could say about freedom and fairness and being older, being a grown-up, and who had a right to do what, and she knew they would all sound like excuses and justifications. Maybe they were. “Forget about me,” she said. “Just think about yourself right now. Grandpa Beck makes everything into a contest, but in real life it’s not. It’s not.”

  Gus turned around and walked towards the doors. Lucy let him go in on his own, like he wanted to. “You’re going to like me again someday,” she called after him.

  Now, sitting in the front with a queasy stomach, Gus five seats away, sweat dampening the armpits of her vintage dress – she doubted everything, everything that had happened in the last month.

  Gus was right. She shouldn’t be here. It wasn’t fair. The family name had pulled strings. Will had pulled strings. Diane Krasner was a publicity hound, and Lucy hadn’t earned this like the other performers had, not this year. She checked the progr怅=amme for the millionth time. She’d go fourth.

  In her peripheral vision, she caught and felt the presence of Will. He’d come down to the front row and now crouched in front of Gus, one hand on Gus’s knee. Giving the teacher pep talk. She’d be next, she knew. He should have talked to her first, then Gus. You always save the most important for last, and she wished he’d done it that way, for Gus’s sake.

  It also felt good, being saved for last.

  He came to her and touched her shoulder. “Hey.”

  “Hi.”

  “You look so pretty. Wow.”

  She smiled. “Thanks.”

  “How do you feel?” He kneeled in the aisle next to her seat.

  “Mm, not awesome. But okay.” She looked at him; she needed to see herself in his eyes. “Do you really think I should be here?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he put his hand on the back of her head and kissed her cheek. She closed her eyes.

  “Everyone’s so excited to hear you play.”

  He stood and walked up the aisle, and Lucy was feeling the imprint of his lips on her face and feeling it and feeling it, and then she thought, Wait, who is “everyone”?

  The audience, Lucy, who else? Calm down.

  She couldn’t keep herself from turning to watch Will take his seat. Aruna didn’t seem to be there; that was a relief. He was with someone else, though. He talked to the woman in the seat next to his and pointed to the programme, leaning in close. Not like a date; the woman wasn’t young. But they were definitely there together.

  Lucy recognized her.

  The director of the Academy. Lucy had been to enough symphony events to know who she was. Will had invited the director of the Academy? Who now saw Lucy staring at her and lifted her programme in a wave. Lucy turned back around towards the stage.

  That was a little odd. Lucy hadn’t talked to anyone at the Academy yet, and neither had her mom. Maybe it was coincidence; Will was friendly with a lot of people from when he had his local TV show.

  When she looked again to see if she’d been imagining it, she saw, seated on Will’s other side, a grey-bearded man, familiar somehow. He was somebody important, but she couldn’t think who.

  And next to him: a younger guy Lucy recognized right away. He had produced the recording Lucy had made with the Cleveland Orchestra, the one Will had played in the car the night of the party.

  Next to the Academy director: Lib Thomas in her signature dyed-red hair. She wrote for the New York Times.

  Four important people in their world, sitting with Will. Talking to him.

  And she knew they were there because he’d told them to be there. It couldn’t be for Gus; Will wouldn’t dare do anything like that without discussing it with Grandpa, and if he had, Lucy would know, because Grandpa would be bragging about it every chance he got.

  They were there to see her, and Will had brought them.

  Why would he do that?

  Will finally saw her looking. He grinned, sheepish. She faced the stage again.

  The point of this was no pressure. No competition. Yes, performance spoke her grandfather’s languageuo;s lan, and now he’d have to listen to what she wanted to say in that language. But mostly, mostly, this was hers.

  Will knew how much she needed that.

  Her face burned, and not from the kiss any more. She clenched her fingers around the hem of her dress, and she wasn’t there, not there in San Francisco, no. But back in Prague, her grandfather acting like everything was A-OK while Lucy found out her grandmother was dying and she wouldn’t get to say goodbye. Acting like he’d had her best interests in mind while betraying her.

  Will wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t betray her, he wouldn’t…

  I can see my future…never having my
own success again.

  He’d said that, in the car that night. After confessing why he’d told Diane Krasner that Lucy had returned to the piano and that he’d had a part in it.

  I guess I wanted to impress her, he’d said.

  She felt sick. She tried to resist but couldn’t help reframing the whole last month in a way that made it seem like, from the beginning, he’d urged her towards all this so that he could say he was the one to bring Lucy back. Make it about him.

  No, she thought. No.

  Not when they were so close. She trusted him. They were practically…

  The programme started up, and Lucy could barely follow what was happening. She wanted to walk out, and she knew she could. No one could make her do this. Not even Will.

  But she’d worked so hard to get here. More than the practice. More than the hours. What she’d given to reclaim this: hurting Gus; defying her grandfather, again; reconciling with her mother, finally; and despite the doubts and nerves, she’d looked forward to the energy she got only from performing, from sharing all of that hard work with others. The whole thing didn’t feel complete until you put it out there.

  Like Will had said.

  He’d been right, about so many things.

  Wrong about her, and what she could accept, even from him. He would try to talk his way out of it, she knew, like he’d talked his way out of how he’d told Diane in the first place. And talked her into the showcase. And talked her out of her worry that Gus would stay mad. All his talking made sense, was the thing. Even his explanation about this night, the one she’d get later, might make sense.

  But, no. To bring those people here, tonight, at this time of year, the phone calls he’d have to have made and the build-up he would have had to give her. And never mention it, when they’d been talking every day? There was no explanation.

  He knew this wasn’t what she wanted.

  Yes, she needed an audience. But she didn’t need it to be the New York Times or the Cleveland Orchestra or the people in the seats behind her now.

  She’d only needed it to be Will.

  But apparently she wasn’t enough of an audience for him.

  The first musician went up – an adorable little girl in a puffy green dress, maybe six years old. Lucy remembered being that age, having to use an extender to reach the pedals. The girl launched into Aaron Copland’s The Cat and the Mouse, the kind of piece that made you work the whole keyboard, racing up and down. For a minute Lucy got lost in watching her. She was good. But six. Six.

  Lucy imagined being sgined beix again. Getting to do it all over, knowing what she knew now. And realized she wouldn’t do it over. She had swum that water and reached the other side. She wouldn’t go back, and she wouldn’t change anything. Except one thing: she would give herself the chance to see her grandmother one more time.

  The picture of her grandmother’s face, the face that had always loved and approved of her, came to Lucy’s mind. What would her grandmother really have thought about Lucy walking out at Prague? Lucy closed her eyes and imagined her grandmother with her now, speaking into this moment. You didn’t do that for me, Lucy, she would say. Lovingly, gently. But honestly. You did it for you.

  And she’d be right.

  Lucy had needed, for a long time before Prague, to step back. To breathe. She just hadn’t known how.

  Her grandmother dying gave her the excuse she’d needed.

  I don’t mind, the memory of her grandmother said.

  But Lucy did mind.

  And from now on, she could only play or not play for her own reasons. She had to stand on her choices. Stop blaming. Not let Will give her an excuse not to, not let Gus, not let anyone.

  She opened her eyes. Applause filled the hall, and the little girl bowed.

  Tonight Lucy had come to play.

  The second musician was halfway through his piece before she even started paying attention to him.

  She was thinking. She turned to take one last look at Will and noticed, a few rows behind him, Carson and Reyna. Carson waved, so big that several people around them were appalled and Reyna yanked his arm down. Lucy stifled a laugh and faced the stage again.

  The sight of them let a little air into her soul. This night, whatever was going wrong, wasn’t like not getting to say goodbye to Grandma. It wasn’t anything like that.

  The third performer was an elderly man whose name sounded familiar to Lucy, like he’d once been a big deal. From the way he fumbled, she could tell that putting him on the programme had been one of those things done out of respect for his legacy and not because he was great any more.

  He looked happy, though, and not embarrassed by that, his wrinkly, spotted hands stiff on the keys but still making music.

  On his face: love. Even as his fingers missed a few notes. And even as Lucy could sense discomfort around her, people wishing he’d hurry up and finish so they could relax.

  Love.

  That was the piece that had been missing, way before Prague. That was the piece that had been missing in her life until Will came and made her feel it, for their work together and for beauty and also for him, though it was hard sometimes to separate those things. Maybe she didn’t love Will like she thought. Or couldn’t, in this moment.

  But what they’d done together, what had been opened by becoming so close, she could still love that. She could love their conversations and their hours at the piano and the results of their work. She could even love the way it hurt right now, because when was the last time she gave her whole heart to something?

  That, all of it, belonged to her. She didn’t have to let Will take it away, the way she’d let her grandfather, the business, herself, take her love for music.

  She would hold on to what was hers. Let go of what wasn’t.

  The old man fihe old mnished. The applause was polite and relieved.

  Lucy stood up for him. She couldn’t tell if he saw her before he shuffled into the wings, apparently forgetting he was supposed to come back down the stage stairs. And if anyone had followed her lead in giving a standing ovation, she didn’t know, and she didn’t care. She kept her eyes straight ahead.

  It was her turn now.

  She made her decision at the keys. The Brahms had been a safe choice all along, the kind of work people expected at a concert like this, impressive enough but not a piece she’d be likely to screw up. She realized that had been Will’s plan – for her to play something she’d nail for his guests. So he could say, Look, I resurrected Lucy Beck-Moreau from her quitting grave.

  When she started playing the Philip Glass – Metamorphosis I – a wave of rustling washed through the audience. People checking their programmes. Murmuring.

  Philip Glass? she heard them thinking. Twentieth-century composers were rarely performed at these things. The piece was not technically challenging in the show-offy way the audience had paid for. This was the big Lucy Beck-Moreau comeback? The theme was repetitive. But every time it came back around, Lucy tried to find something new to discover in it.

  When she finished Part I, she was tempted, momentarily, to

  move into II. The series of pieces were meant to be heard together. But she couldn’t take up that much time, and anyway, she’d made her point.

  She stood to bow and received uncertain applause. When she straightened up, she scanned the crowd, not for Will, or Carson and Reyna, but for her mother. There she was, stage right and down front, sitting with Lucy’s dad on one side and Grandpa Beck on the other, Martin next to him. Lucy smiled at her and held out a hand, the way you do when you’re acknowledging a pit orchestra. Her mother stretched out her arm in reply.

  Like the old man before her, Lucy exited into the wings. She found him sitting on a metal folding chair in front of the curtain rigging. He looked up at her with watery eyes. “That was nice,” he said.

  “I want to be like you,” she replied.

  He laughed. “No. Keep being like you.”

  She found another folding ch
air and sat next to him, so she could watch Gus from the wings.

  The reception after the showcase was a crush of people. Lucy stayed near her family. Usually, Grandpa Beck would be working the crowd, taking Gus around, making him talk to people. Tonight Lucy’s dad was Gus’s chaperone, and her grandfather seemed abnormally subdued.

  “Interesting choice, Lucy,” he said.

  “Did you like it?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “But I didn’t hate it.”

  It was the best she could expect from him, most likely. “What do you like, Grandpa? What do you love?”

  He gave her a quizzical look. “I’m sorry?”

  “What do you love?” she repeated.

  “All of it. I love it all.”

  Lucy laughed.

  “You think I’m joking. I’ve given my life to this, Lucy. My money. My time. I could be sipping mai tais on the coast of New Zealand.” He gazed out on the room. She thought of him eight years before, weeping to see Leon Fleisher recover his second hand. “I know I’m an old crank. I can’t explain myself, especially with your grandmother gone. Don’t expect me to.”

  “I …won’t.” Already she was thinking how she’d tell this story to Will before realizing she probably wouldn’t. It would take a while to break that habit, him being her audience.

  Lucy’s mother came over with a glass of champagne. “This is the most people I’ve ever seen at this thing,” her mother said. They were clustered in a safe corner of the lobby, watching Gus and her dad circulate. “Diane Krasner will be happy. Lots of big donors.”

  Grandpa Beck narrowed his eyes. “Who is Gustav talking to now? Good God. Will brought the entire establishment. Does he think we don’t know how to market Gus?”

  Lucy held her tongue. Let him think what he wanted, that Will’s entourage of influencers were for Gus. Hopefully Gus thought that, too.

  She’d been deciding whether or not to talk to Will; then she saw him near the bar with the record-company producer, and it was the producer who waved her over. “Be right back,” she said to her mom.