Andrea ran through the details of a school day with the attention to detail, and celebration of the mundane, known best to nine year-olds and savants. “Mrs. Parker made us sit very still for five whole minutes!” she reported, alarmed. “All we did was breathe, in and out, in and out.”
“That sounds like a nice, quiet five minutes for Mrs. Parker! Do you think she just wanted a break?”
“I don’t know! She said we had to try not to think.”
Megan changed lanes and prepared for the turn onto her street in Jamaica Plain, a recently gentrified neighborhood of Boston. She had liked the area ever since first driving through to look at apartments, finding a nice contrast here with the intense traffic and bustle of the U-Mass area, and the barely imaginable bedlam around Andrea’s school. “Maybe she’s right. We all need to take time out. Thinking is over-rated, I’d say.”
“No way!” Andrea objected. “I love thinking!”
“Too much will fry your brain,” Megan warned, half-serious. “A calm five minutes sounds like a good way to relax. You should try it before you play the piano, just to calm everything down.”
“OK,” she replied, noncommittally. Megan pulled up outside the apartment building, glad that her space hadn’t been commandeered by a Croatian dentist.
Andrea waited until Megan had unlocked the door before bounding up the stairs and into the apartment with an absolute familiarity. “I’m going to the bathroom,” she announced. Megan opened the piano, ready for their lesson. A few chords showed her keen ears that it had kept its tuning well despite the changing humidity as winter finally gave way to spring. Andrea had, at the very least, remembered to bring her music this time, whether or not the pieces had actually been practiced.
A precocious and obviously talented young lady, Andrea had been through a lot but seemed able to soldier on, optimistic and endlessly curious, her horizons broadening more quickly each year. Megan very often found herself simply amazed.
“Bach first!” Andrea proclaimed.
“No... What have I always said?” Megan said with a wagging finger.
“Ugh!” Andrea huffed. “Scales...”
“Come on, now. What are scales, really?” she asked, seemingly for the ten millionth time.
Andrea pulled a face. “The building blocks of music,” she groaned in her dullest, most boring voice.
“But... If you can play scales...” Megan prompted.
“... You can play anything,” Andrea parroted back. “OK, but only the major ones.” She slowly but assuredly executed C-major, then G-major, before Megan growled at her to play at least one minor key scale. “I hate the minor ones!” she wailed, but performed a proficient, if slightly halting, A-minor.
“And if all music was always happy, all the time, we wouldn’t need minor, but it’s not, is it?” Megan asked, determined that Andrea received the fundamentals, despite her objections. Andrea harrumphed her way through E-minor before insisting that they turn to the pieces.
They were about a third of the way through a Bach two-part invention when Megan heard the vibration of her phone in her bag. She waited for Andrea to come to a halt, at a place where her otherwise decent muscle memory let her down, before starting her off again and checking her texts.
Hey Megan, I’m sorry but I won’t be able to pick up Andrea tonight, but... Surprise! Jake is coming instead. Usual time. Tom.
The remainder of the Bach could have been flawless and Megan might not have noticed. Jake McMahon. Old memories quickly resurfaced, images of a geeky, intelligent young man, made shy by acne and female rejection. Tom had bullied his younger brother as they grew up together, but upon reaching their late teens, the pair found a grudging but genuine and mutual respect. A flare for engineering, coupled with newly-acquired marketing and public relations specialties, had formed the ideal team and, within a year of graduation, the two young men were poised to stamp their inimitable mark on the world of Information Technology.
“There! Wasn’t that perfect?” Andrea wanted to know, hands above her head in self-congratulation.
Snapping back to the present, Megan replied, “Much better, Andrea. You’re keeping a good tempo, but I want you to remember that this isn’t just a string of notes, it’s...”
“A conversation,” Andrea said, repeating a well-worn refrain. “Mr. Right Hand,” she said, wiggling her right fingers, “is talking with Mr. Left Hand.” She mimed the two chattering to each other. “I remember.”
“OK, well. Let me hear some of that new piece we tried last time.”
Andrea made a face. “Sure, if you want.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Megan asked, opening the book of Easy Modern Piano Pieces and placing it on the piano’s music stand.
“I dunno. It’s just a bit boring,” Andrea replied, her shoulders slumped.
“Let me play it for you again, OK? Maybe you’ll like it better.”
Having come close to bullying Andrea into sight-reading the short piece once more, Megan glanced at her watch and found their time almost at an end. “Your uncle Jake is coming to pick you up today. Isn’t that cool?”