My Dearest Friend

by Nancy Thayer

  There were other objects on the piano top too—it held so much. An alabaster box trimmed in brass, fading from emerald green to pearl. A large Chinese vase, a reproduction, but costly—for Daphne—nonetheless, which Daphne had filled with multicolored zinnias from the back garden.

  It was the flowers that Alexandra was focused on.

  “Pretty fwower, Mommy!” the little girl said.

  And in a flash she was clambering up from the piano bench, and then onto the piano keyboard. For a moment she stood with both feet in their tiny pink rubber sneakers, balanced on the piano keys. The piano plinked and plonked as she shifted forward, reaching for the flowers.

  Daphne looked at Carey Ann, who was calmly watching her daughter with adoration on her face. “I don’t think it’s wise for her to stand on the piano keyboard,” Daphne said. But the words were scarcely out of her mouth when Alexandra, unable to reach the flowers, stepped on the music rack and crawled up onto the piano lid. Then, scooting along on her knees, she made her way toward the vase of flowers, knocking picture frames to the left and right as she went. The picture of Daphne’s parents, poised rigidly inside an old gilded wooden frame, thwacked to the floor. The alabaster box, struck by the child’s knee, flew to the edge of the piano and hovered there. Alexandra reached out for the flowers, and Daphne took three giant strides and grabbed the vase just before it toppled, as Carey Ann raced across the room and scooped up her daughter.

  “Oh, sweetie, be careful!” she said. “You could fall and hurt yourself!”

  Daphne stood, the vase of flowers in her arms, staring at Carey Ann. Carey Ann turned, holding Alexandra in her arms, and, at Daphne’s expression, her own turned immediately into one of childish alarm.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked. Her daughter was trying to squirm away from her to get back to the piano; her arms were waving frantically and she was kicking her feet. “Fwower!” she screamed.

  Daphne took a deep breath. “Carey Ann, I think you need to learn to control your daughter more, at least when she’s in someone else’s home. She almost broke several valuable things of mine, irreplaceable objects.”

  Carey Ann gasped at Daphne’s words, and Alexandra must have felt the shock waves in her mother’s body, for the little girl went quiet suddenly and stared up at her mother’s face.

  “Oh!” Carey Ann said. Suddenly she was trembling all over, and her face had gone white, drained of all color. “Oh! No wonder your daughter won’t live with you!” she cried. Her lower lip quivered and her mouth opened as if she were about to say something else, when instead she swept across the room, clutching her baby to her tightly, pulled open the door, and hurried out into the rain. Alexandra, face round with surprise, gazed over Carey Ann’s shoulder at Daphne and then at the house.

  Daphne stood, the vase of flowers in her hand, and felt such a wave of despair sweep over her that she, too, began to shake. Tears sprang to her eyes. She felt both violated and guilty. Something about Carey Ann reminded her of Cynthia—perhaps it was just her youth—although she knew she had taught Cynthia better manners. Cyn would never act this way in someone else’s home, though she might act this way around Daphne, in her own home.

  Daphne strode to the front door and stood watching as Carey Ann bent into the passenger side of the car, strapping her daughter into her car seat. Then she went to the driver’s side, got in, and drove off. Soon, where the white convertible had been, only a wall of pouring rain remained.

  Daphne shut the door and leaned against it. She grinned, for the yellow rain slickers of both Hamilton females were still hanging on the antique oak coatrack in the front corner of the living room. Those rain slickers made Daphne feel triumphant, made her feel that she had won.

  But won what? My God, Daphne thought, what had happened? She put the vase of flowers back on the piano lid and set up the picture frames again. Nothing was broken. Suddenly the room seemed very empty, emptied, and she was overcome with an extreme and immediate exhaustion.

  The soggy tea things were strewn all over the kitchen table, but she left them and walked into her bedroom and lay down on her bed. Here it was dim and cool. She kicked off her shoes and pulled a quilt up over her. Rain streamed down the windows, the outside walls, enclosing the house in a steady, heavy thrumming noise; and it was like being on a ferry or in an airplane with the engine drumming away incessantly. She had that sensation of being trapped for a while in something bigger than she was, something moving, carrying her someplace, and she could only calmly let herself be carried, while the droning around her assured her that something else around her was persevering, and she could rest.

  Memory was bizarre: it was so defensive. How many times had she tried to remember a time, an event, with David, or even being in Joe’s arms—and her memory threw up walls of brick, clouds of fog. She couldn’t get through to her own past life! Or she would try and try to focus, only to find herself becoming irritated, agitated, restless, and without the memory she was craving.

  But Carey Ann’s dramatic exit, and the sight of Alexandra at the piano, a small blond girl child at the piano, had released a memory in Daphne that was as ripe and full as the present. Or, rather, it had released Daphne into the memory, and as she lay on her bed surrounded by the sound of rain, it was as if she had just sunk down into a pool of remembrance.

  Three years ago (three million years ago, so much had changed since then), Daphne and David had been seated in the Grange Hall with half the other people in the town, waiting for the local spring student music recital to begin. David had gone to Westhampton College, and like many other alums, had loved it so much he had come back to Westhampton to live. He was a lawyer, a handsome and eloquent man, but he was an alcoholic. Two wives had left him because of his drinking. Now, in his forties, he and Daphne were lovers. He wanted Daphne to marry him, and Daphne had promised him she would—as soon as he managed to get himself sober and to stay that way. His states of ugly drunkenness did not come often, but when they did, they were terrifying, and she would not inflict them on Cynthia, who adored David.

  Tonight David had promised that he had had only the two gin-and-tonics that Daphne had given him, and she thought she believed him. He was being very quiet and contained as he sat upright on his uncomfortable metal folding chair next to her. It was early May, and although the spring had so far been unseasonably cool, today the temperature had shot up to nearly eighty and the humidity and pollen made the air dense with invisible, irritating motes and flecks. Daphne had leaned over to put her hand on David’s arm to let him know she loved him now and was grateful that he had come with her.

  It had always seemed to Daphne to go against ordinary logic and even Christian compassion that student music recitals were held in such mundane and insufficiently ventilated rooms, where the audience shifted their numbed bums on tiny ancient folding metal chairs that threatened at every moment to collapse beneath them. These recitals were always, at the best, horrible torturous events, while earnest or uninterested little children pecked and blatted their way through asinine little tunes that no one over the age of ten ever wanted to hear again in her life. Daphne’s vision of eternity was listening to Heather Goldman, who was six years old, turgidly plonking her way through “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” while her parents, who also had the poor child taking ballet, ice skating, tap dancing, and art studio, slunk to the front (bent over so as not to deprive the rest of the audience of the sight of their daughter at the piano) to snap pictures of her hitting every single note.

  Oh, David did love her, Daphne thought, to sit through all of this, and if he could put up with this for her, why couldn’t she put up with his bad patches? As the other cute or nasty little children appeared to maim and camouflage “Lightly Row,” “Old MacDonald” (Oh, Christ, oh, Christ, why hadn’t all the music teachers in the world long ago conspired to eradicate “Old MacDonald” from the music books?), “Little Indian Dance,” “Frère Jacques,” and “Pop Goes the Weasel,” Daphne occupied herself
by going over in her mind for the millionth time just why it was she was not marrying David when she loved him so and he loved her. The answer was always the same, and irrefutable: she did not want Cynthia exposed to David drunk.

  After a brief intermission during which all the parents sprang from their chairs as if released from the rack and stretched their arms and rubbed their backsides and yawned and made a lot of noise, it was time for the older students to play. This was almost pleasurable, even worth waiting for, but now of course all the younger pupils who had already performed were seated in the audience, giggling and picking their noses and falling off their chairs and making paper airplanes out of their programs. Dorothy Kasper, the head teacher, came out onstage to say a few words about the proper behavior at a concert, then disappeared behind the curtain, leaving the older students to perform to a room that sounded vaguely like a mutinous insane asylum.

  Daphne managed to filter out the other noise and focus on the pianists. She thought it was just possible that Cynthia might make a career out of music, for she wanted to do something in the performing arts, and she had lost interest in ballet. Cynthia was thirteen, and taller than a lot of her classmates, and filling out with what Daphne considered astonishing rapidity. Seniors in high school were already calling to ask her out (Daphne wouldn’t let her go). So far she had not hit that humiliating “awkward” stage so many teenagers hit. She was tall, and slender, and tonight wore her long blond hair in an elaborate French braid that hung down her back and was entwined with tiny lilac flowers. Her best friend had done it—if Daphne had done it, it would have been pronounced, for some reason, wrong. Daphne had offered to buy Cynthia a Laura Ashley dress even though they were so damned expensive, but Cynthia had rolled her eyes in disbelief and said, “Oh, Mom, you’re so archaic,” and left the room exhausted with the burden of her mother’s hopeless gaucherie. Now, as she came across the stage to sit at the piano, she was wearing layers of clothing that actually looked like layers of old sheets and tablecloths and that made it impossible for anyone to believe there was an actual human body hidden inside, which was probably, after all, Cynthia’s intent.

  Cynthia played “Für Elise” and part of the Moonlight Sonata. The old favorites, the old standbys. Unless absolutely butchered, these pieces were crowd-pleasers. As Cynthia began to play, Daphne stopped breathing. If Cynthia faltered or hit a dissonant chord, Daphne knew she would die on the spot with embarrassment for her child. Her hands were sweating so terribly she had to keep wiping them on her skirt. David, sensing Daphne’s nervousness (how could he not?—she was practically bleeping with anxiety), put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a small reassuring hug.

  And after a while, it was obvious that Cynthia was not going to make any mistakes. She had these pieces down pat. Daphne knew this—she had heard Cynthia practice probably billions of times by now—but still … Still, it was such a relief to hear the music rippling, waterlike, fluid, sparkling, from her child’s hands.

  It was worth it. All those years of lessons. All the things Daphne had forfeited in order to pay for the lessons, all the grueling moments she had reminded—forced—Cynthia to practice. Now Cynthia was playing the Moonlight Sonata, and the music swelled and opened like the color lavender deepening on a dusky summer night. Now, no matter what else happened, in times of sadness or pain, Cynthia would be able to sit at the piano and play these eternal Beethoven pieces, which with their amaranthine melodies would lift her from the present into a pure and peaceful space.

  Daphne’s cheeks were wet when her daughter finished. The applause was spontaneous, enthusiastic, deafening. My God, sometimes life really was worth living, sometimes it really gave you something back!

  Other teenagers played, none as well as Cynthia, and Daphne listened halfheartedly, actually resting from the euphoria to which she had been lifted. Then Tammy Benton sat down to play the final selection, the first movement of Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata, the longest and most complicated piece to be performed that evening.

  Daphne was impressed simply that the girl, at Cynthia’s age, was attempting it. Secretly she hoped the girl would do terribly, that she would foul up and hit clunkers and even end up sobbing with humiliation onstage in front of everyone. (Cynthia and Tammy were rivals. Tammy really was a horrible little bitch—she had been trained well by her mother, who was poisonous and nasty and snobbish and who had reduced Daphne to secret fits of rage and weeping many times.)

  But in spite of all the ill will Daphne could summon up and send out into the air, Tammy played beautifully. Masterfully. She was splendid.

  “Wow,” David said to Daphne when the girl had finished (he didn’t know how Daphne and Cynthia felt about Tammy and her mother). And the applause was stunning; some people even rose to give the girl a standing ovation.

  Then the applause fell down to a pattering, and the concert was over. Mothers and fathers and teachers carried long tables out into the hall and set out punch, paper cups, brownies, and cookies. Little girls who had played piano with huge pink bows in their hair raced around the room pursuing little boys, while the older children sauntered around the room looking desperately bored.

  “I need a drink,” David whispered.

  “You deserve one after this,” Daphne replied. But they waited until Cynthia had received all the praise it seemed she could get that evening and the hall was emptying of people. Then Daphne and David crossed the room to collect her. But just before they reached her, horrid simpering Tammy slid up in front of Daphne.

  “Hello, Mrs. Miller,” she said with cloying sweetness.

  “Hello, Tammy,” Daphne said. “You played beautifully tonight.”

  “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Miller,” Tammy said.

  The girl would have stood there smirking and twittering, but Daphne said, “We’re late for something else, must go, good-bye,” and swept around Tammy, devoted darling David following in her wake. “Ready?” she asked Cynthia, who was now staring at her with a face like the plague.

  David drove (he had the loveliest Mercedes, gray-blue and as deep and smooth as a good dream), Cynthia slid silently into the back seat, and Daphne turned from the front passenger seat to talk to her daughter.

  “Oh, Cyn, my angel, I am so proud of you, do you know that?” she said. “You played so beautifully tonight!”

  “Yeah, that’s what you told Tammy too,” Cynthia said.

  At once Daphne knew that her daughter was about to treat her to something from The Exorcist. Of her many roles, this was the worst. Actually, in a way it was her best, for she played it with a power that would have put Linda Blair to shame, but it was the hardest for Daphne to deal with.

  “Oh, honey …” Daphne began.

  “You didn’t have to tell her that,” Cynthia said. “You know how I feel about her!”

  “And I agree!” Daphne said. “I think Tammy Benton is a piece of slime. But, darling, this is the world we’re living in, and she did come up to me. What could I do, spit in her face?”

  “You didn’t have to tell her she played beautifully. You could have said she played nicely. You didn’t have to say beautifully. God.”

  “Oh, Cyn, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, it just popped out,” Daphne began.

  “Yeah, the way it popped out when you told me I played beautifully.” Cynthia’s voice was full of scorn.

  “Cynthia,” Daphne said, injecting firmness and common sense into her voice, “there is no reason for you to ruin this wonderful night by fussing about that awful Tammy Benton. You were so wonderful, you should be so proud of yourself, I’m so proud of you, it would just be a waste of our lives to spend another second even thinking about that stupid little twit, let alone arguing about her.”

  “Oh, now you’re trying to get out of it.”

  “Out of what?” Daphne asked, baffled.

  “Out of telling me the truth. Like you always do, evading the issue, trying to sneak away from telling me the truth.”

  “Cynthia,” D
aphne said, “the labyrinth of your mind is a thing of wonder to me.”

  No response. Cynthia sat staring at her mother with righteous anger vibrating from her entire body.

  “All right.” Daphne surrendered. “What is the truth that you think I’m trying to evade?”

  “That you think Tammy played better than I did.”

  Now Daphne was stumped. How was she going to get out of this one? For Tammy had played better than Cynthia. In her deepest, deepest heart of hearts, Daphne thought not only that Tammy’s piece was more difficult but also that she had played it with real feeling, with subtleties and nuances, whereas her own daughter had merely played with expertise.

  “Cynthia,” she said, sighing, “I do think that Tammy’s piece was more complicated than yours. Of course I would be lying if I said otherwise. And it does seem that she is just a little more advanced than you are. Perhaps she’s been taking lessons longer. Perhaps she practices more. Perhaps she’s driven, perhaps she wants to be a concert pianist, I don’t know, how can I know, and I don’t even care. I don’t care about Tammy! I don’t think she played better than you. I don’t even want to consider this evening in those terms. I don’t want to think about that horrible girl. Oh, darling love, why can’t we forget her and just be so happy that you did so well? You know, I felt like my entire life was justified when I heard you play. I felt like you had just recompensed me for all those hours in labor.”