“Oh, crap,” Luca mutters under his breath.
“We had to consider Pete’s and Jay’s things too. But don’t worry. I got a good deal on it.”
I nearly choke. “You sold it? You sold my piano? I have an audition in six weeks.”
She folds her arms and huffs out a breath. “I’m aware of that. You still have your keyboard.”
My nails cut half-moons into my palms. She can’t be serious. Despite my mixed feelings on leaving next year, I submitted a prescreening video to Manhattan School of Music back in January. You can’t just apply to that school and then sit yourself down in their performance hall and play them a little ditty. You have to get invited to play them a little ditty and, by some miracle, I was. My audition is on July thirty-first, which is the whole reason I went to the Boston workshop. It’s no small thing. It’s a huge, holy-shit kind of thing for serious pianists. I thought Mom knew that. She encouraged me to submit the video. She always said I was made for big things. She talks about when I’m a fancy-schmancy pianist performing in Carnegie Hall. Of course, over the years she’s said all of this with a wave of her hand, like we’re discussing whether to have chicken or steak for dinner, but still. And back in April, when the letter from Manhattan came, she squealed and jumped around our duplex’s kitchen and even tried to get me to drink some cheap wine cooler in celebration. More than that, she promised, over and over, to drive me to New York. She babbled on for days about how we’d make a trip out of it, a girls-on-the-town kind of thing. And now she’s making that trip happen. We’re really going. Mother and daughter, making our dreams come true. Our wishes.
So, I still have my keyboard? Really?
“My keyboard fits on my lap,” I say. “It has no dynamics, no pedal. It doesn’t even have eighty-eight keys. It’s not a piano. I can’t practice fucking Rachmaninoff on that thing!”
Jay whispers a “damn,” and Pete clears his throat before tossing back a swig of beer. Luca stares at his lap, chewing his lip. Mom glances at all of them, gauging their reaction for how to respond.
Finally, she says, “I’ll thank you to watch your language.”
I gape at her.
“Besides, baby, that thing was always out of tune. It’s hardly a loss.”
As usual, her assessment is a hair shy of accurate. Tuning wasn’t my piano’s problem. It’s the A key, nearest to middle C. It buzzed and sometimes it stuck. But it was a real piano, something I never thought I’d have, so I made it work. When I was ten, a local church was getting rid of its old piano to make room for a beautiful black-lacquered baby grand. Mom haggled with the pastor, really amping up her charm, and we got the scarred upright for next to nothing. Its keys were yellowed, some of them chipped, but I took care of it and kept it in tune and it was mine. My canvas, my escape.
“I’m sorry, baby,” Mom says, setting her hand on the back of Pete’s thick neck. “But sometimes sacrifices are necessary when you’re going to be part of a family.”
I flinch like I’ve been slapped. Pete and Jay have the decency to look away, but Luca watches me calmly, his palms braced on the table like he’s prepared to get up and bolt, a gentle hand leading me away from the mayhem. He’s done it before, distracting me from drama at home or from sexts pasted all over the Internet with pizza-fry-eating wars and daydreaming about rearranging Mrs. Latham’s beach gnomes into R-rated positions.
Mom watches me too, her expression all reprimanding mother. Family? Sacrifices?
“Grace,” Mom says, taking a sip of her beer, “don’t make a big deal out of this. It’s just—?”
“Right. It’s just music. I know.”
Mom lifts her chin, defiant, but her eyes have gone soft. Pleading. “I don’t mean it like that, baby. We’ll figure it out.”
“Right,” I say, always the acquiescent daughter.
Usually. Usually I say okay with my mouth and bitch about everything in my head. Usually I move into the next apartment, deal with the next mess, figure out how to pay the next bill.
But today, I’m sort of done with usually.Without another word, I turn my back on her—?on the family dinner—?and disappear into my room, slamming the door behind me like any normal red-blooded American teenager would.
Chapter Seven
I REPAINT MY FINGERNAILS. MOM STARTED PAINTING MY nails when I was three. She taught me how to do my own when I was five.
Always glossy dark purple.
Same as her.
“Like sisters,” she had said, pressing a kiss to my thumb and closing her eyes. I knew she was making a wish. “We wish on our fingertips, baby, not the stars.”
“Why?” I had asked, wide-eyed and still a little in love with my wild, beautiful mother. She held her hand over mine, showing me how to paint from the center of the nail out.
“Because,” she said slowly, her tongue pressed to her top lip the way it does when she’s concentrating. “If you really want something, baby, the stars won’t help you. You have to reach out and take it.”
It’s been several years since we huddled on the couch and did our nails together. It used to be fun, giggling and gossiping and carving a space out of reality where we were just sisters and the mother and daughter were the illusion. But I got tired of that script around the time I turned twelve and Mom decided I was old enough to hear about her occasional one-night stands in between boyfriends, which wasn’t really something a girl who hadn’t even had her first period needed to know. Plus, aside from my immaculate nails, the rest of me—?my hair, my attempts at makeup, clothes—?was a total freaking mess for all of middle school until Emmy finally taught me how to put on mascara and match a top to a skirt.
Still, I haven’t been able to shake the nail habit, though unlike Mom’s loyalty to aubergine, I dabble in all the purples. I tried red one time. Blue another. But other colors just looked weird on me, a stranger’s hands. Varying the shades is the closest I’ve been able to get to nail polish rebellion.
Tonight I paint with Lavender Sunrise, every nail except my middle fingers. Those I coat in an almost bloody-looking blackberry color.
“Is that supposed to be a subtle fuck you?” Luca asks, getting up from my bed where he’s been weaving together some old guitar strings into something that vaguely resembles a napkin holder. My roommate in Boston played guitar to blow off steam from piano performances and the workshop, which was pretty tense most of the time. She threw away a bunch of used strings, but I grabbed them out of the trash can, knowing Luca would love them. He’s always creating stuff out of totally random materials. Anything he can bend or melt or break into something weird and functional. After he graduates, he and Macon have big plans to start up some sort of industrial design business here on the cape. His mom pushes college, but he just waves her off.