‘You are a disappointment.’ The Maestro’s teeth are gritted. ‘You fail me on purpose, I know it, du nutzloser Junge. Mayhap my daughter will try harder to carry my legacy.’
‘I do try,’ Beck says. He should shut up, but – this time? This time is so, so different. ‘I swear, I do. I’m just not good enough.’
‘No,’ she says coldly. ‘You’re not. You are a disgrace to my name. You play for hours a day and what do I hear? Rubbish! I’m sickened by the very sound of your mistakes. And yet you cannot do better – nein. You do not try to do better.’
Beck tells himself he doesn’t care. He doesn’t, doesn’t – doesn’t—
‘I wanted a prodigy. And what did I get? You. You worthless disappointment.’ The Maestro snatches her plate of half-eaten sausage and potatoes and flings it against the wall. Food makes a wet splatter. Crockery shatters.
Joey scoots forward and hugs Beck’s leg. ‘Don’t hurt him,’ she whimpers.
The Maestro grabs the vase of pebbles and fake flowers from the bench top. She slams that against the wall too, but doesn’t let go, so glass bites her flesh. Blood flows. Beck backs away as shards rain across his arms. She’s lost it. She’s – this can’t – no.
‘Go to your room, Jo,’ he whispers, prying her off his leg.
‘Did I say you could leave?’ the Maestro screams.
‘I’m sorry.’ He has nothing else to say.
‘SORRY IS NOT ENOUGH ANY MORE.’ The Maestro is gone, gone, deep into the agony of ruined hands and abandonment and frothing hate. But she can still hit.
She grabs Beck by the throat of his shirt and rams him into the wall. He’s not a plate. He doesn’t shatter. But the wind goes out of him in a whoosh.
Her fist connects with his jaw.
It’s OK, Beck, just go away, go somewhere else in your head. Where’s your music? Find your music. Better you than Joey, right? Right.
Or stand up –
fight?
Beck shoves the Maestro away. Hard.
The surprise on her face is matched by the catastrophic pounding of his heart. He’s going to regret that. Her eyes are too white, her face discoloured, her hands trembling violently.
‘She’s not playing the piano,’ Beck says, ragged. ‘If you try, I’ll smash the piano. I swear I’ll smash that gottverdammte piano.’
But his voice trembles, and how can you take a wavering threat seriously?
‘I sacrificed everything for that piano,’ the Maestro shouts. ‘Everything, you ungrateful brat. The thousands I needed for therapy on my hands, I spent on you. Thousands!’ She slaps him for emphasis. ‘So you would have a future. You will play, you will—’
‘Maybe I don’t want to.’ What is he doing? He’s bitten his tongue and his mouth is full of blood. Stop. Stop talking. But there is a crack across his soul and something red and vicious and desperate crawls out. ‘Maybe I hate the piano too. But you never ask. You never care. You hate me because I’m not like you. Well, guess what? I’ll never be like you.’
The Maestro’s hands wrap into his shirt, shaking so hard, so hard, so hard. ‘You will.’ Her voice is a hiss.
‘I hate music,’ he says, soft as heartbreak and goodbyes and a thousand kilometres beneath the quiet earth.
And he hates that he doesn’t quite mean it. He hates her music – he’s in love with his own.
He’s ready for the next slap, but not how she then falls to her knees in a sob, in a scream, and her hand wraps around a jagged shard of plate. Potato drips off it in a pink cloud.
The crockery cuts into her hands, deep, deep, as she squeezes the plate. Her lips move and it takes him a moment to realise the buzzing in his head drowns out her words.
Her whispers are in German. If only I had no son.
A sob chokes Beck’s throat. Would she try to kill him? ‘Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.’
Her eyes fix on the shard, on the blood oozing as it cuts through her flesh and hits bone. She’s destroying her hand. She’s lost. She’s not coming back.
Carefully, his mouth bloody, cheek bruised from the slaps, Beck drops to the floor and crawls towards her. He hesitates. She’s on her knees, shoulders heaving, blood dripping steadily to the floor. He touches her arm. She doesn’t move. So his hands close around her massive wrist and he pries her fingers open one by one until the shard of plate is free and clatters to the tiles.
‘J-J-Joey,’ Beck says. ‘You have to call an ambulance.’
He’s not sure if he could without losing himself.
He grabs a tea towel and wraps it around the Maestro’s hands. She lets him. She’s so blank, so terrifyingly blank. Where is his mother? Beck’s eyes blur.
Her lips part, terrified. ‘Nein. No one can see this.’
Everyone should see this.
‘You need stitches,’ he says.
Why? Why not just leave her on the floor and let her bleed?
Slowly, she’s returning – holding the tea towel to her hands herself, straightening, surveying, brain so obviously ticking.
‘I can explain this to them.’ She licks her lips. ‘But not you. Not you.’
Because his face bears the red handprint of her tantrum. They’d call the police.
Does he want that?
‘Go.’ The Maestro’s voice is harsh. ‘Go now. I will say I had a fit, I lost my medication. I will explain this away.’
Behind him, he hears Joey on the phone, her voice a trembling squeak. ‘My mama is hurt and sad. Oh. OK. Danke.’ She tiptoes over and holds it carefully towards the Maestro.
The Maestro takes it and hangs up. ‘They’ll still come,’ she growls. ‘But if you are not here I can do this. I can do this.’
Does he want to be found? Does he? Does he?
‘Get out.’ Her voice rises to a thunderclap. ‘Get outside, Schwachkopf, or I will tell them you did this to me.’ She points a bloodied finger towards Joey. ‘And I will do worse to her.’
Why is he so pathetic?
Why?
Cold air touches his bleeding face, soothing like an ice pack. His cheek is swollen, lip broken, and he’s cut half a hole in his tongue. It’s been worse. One bruise and a bloody mouth is just a warning from the Maestro. Yet it’d be bliss to swallow the winter wind right now and be numb. He wants so badly to be numb.
To forget.
To not think.
He could’ve stayed – fought for himself, for Joey, told the truth when the ambulance arrived. But the Maestro has always been convincing and he’s never had a backbone and he’s too scared she’d hurt Joey. Maybe if he stayed the truth would come out. Maybe the world would pluck him and Joey from their life of piano keys and acidic shouts and hard slaps. Maybe he’d lose Joey. Maybe he’d be taken away, far from here, and lose August too.
August.
He runs from his house as the ambulance’s red and blue lights appear at the top of the street. He never runs, so it’s hard work, but good. The ground races away beneath him, dark and uneven, and he stumbles several times, but keeps going. He has no jacket. He has no idea what he should do.
The music in his head has stopped completely. Don’t think about that now. Don’t think.
Linger until the ambulance is gone and then sneak inside? Clean up the Maestro’s blood and sweep the smashed dishes and put a Band-Aid over the gangrenous gash in their family?
He’s crying. Stupid. He needs to collect himself, not fall into a trembling heap.
Where’s he going?
He takes a left down an avenue he’s thought about countless times. August’s street. What’s her number? Nine? No, eleven. And there’s a veterinary beside it, or something, or – whatever. He’s not going in.
He slows to a jog, legs aching at the stretch of unused muscles. The houses look sleepy, peaceful, with only the occasional front yard a weedy heap. One house has their garage open, a girl swinging a spanner and plunging her face under a car hood. She looks up as he passes, but he walks faster. Head low. He must look wild.
His body throbs to the beat of the Maestro’s metronome slaps. His legs ache from running. The icy night has frozen his split lip. He can’t show up on August’s doorstep like this. He can’t show up at all.
It was his decision to tuck tail between legs and run instead of fighting for help. His decision. His.
August does not exist to save him, not when he can screw his spineless whimpers and save himself.