I could tell just by the way she carried herself that it wasn’t possible.
I’d always felt like I had an eye for phonies, for people who wanted to play piano for all the wrong reasons. There was a difference between someone wanting to be the center of attention or have a party trick to pull out when someone has a house piano, and someone who genuinely loved music, who had to play it to breathe, to exist.
Sarah was the latter.
“I want to hear more about your injury first,” I said. “Then, I want to know what your goals are — short and long term. Finally, I’ll have you play a piece for me, and then we can discuss how I can help.”
“Okay,” Sarah said, letting out a long breath. She finally took a seat at the barstool across from me, and she splayed her long, thin fingers out on the counter before tucking her hands in her lap. “I was in my last year at Bramlock. I was supposed to be graduating this month, actually,” she said. “But…”
“The injury,” I finished for her.
Her eyes clouded over then, and she sniffed, taking a quick sip of water. “Yeah. The injury.”
“Tell me more about that.”
She swallowed. “It was last summer when it first happened. I was taking summer classes, and there was a performance exam coming up. My professor…” She paused, taking a sip of water again before continuing. “He was riding me really hard. And I don’t blame him,” she said quickly, her eyes snapping up to mine before they fell to the counter again. “It wasn’t his fault I took it all so seriously and played nearly every hour of every day for that whole week.”
I could already feel where the story was going before she finished, and though I applauded her for not placing blame on her professor, something told me he did play a big part in it. Any experienced teacher would have seen the signs, the duress, long before the injury occurred.
But at a university, when there are hundreds of students to look after, it’s harder to do.
“I knew I needed to rest before the exam,” she continued. “So, I gave myself the weekend off before the performance on Monday. I knew my wrists had been hurting, my hands, but… I didn’t realize how badly I’d been pushing. And when I stopped playing…”
“Everything seized up.”
She nodded, eyes glossing over. “Like an old car engine.” She extended her hands out toward me. “My wrists swelled up like balloons, I couldn’t even hold a pen.”
Sarah let her hands fall to the counter again, staring at them like they were someone else’s, like they’d betrayed her the way an ex-boyfriend might have. She started picking at her nails for a second before she pulled them back into her lap. Her eyes had changed, had darkened with her story. And we both knew there were no words I could say to take back what happened to her.
I let her sit in silence for a moment, refilling her glass and waiting.
“So,” she finally said. “I went to the doctor, obviously. Essentially, I had completely shredded the primary muscles I needed to play and then fucked up my secondary muscles, too.” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
I smirked. “It’s okay. Trust me, my vocabulary is at least thirty-five percent curse words.”
“Fifty percent,” Randall called from the other room.
We all laughed, and Sarah seemed a bit relieved at that, folding her hand back in her lap.
“Anyway,” she said. “I couldn’t play all fall semester. I was falling behind, and I knew I was about to be faced with more school time if I didn’t figure it out. But there were so many steps before I could even play again.” She counted off on her fingers. “Nerve testing, deep tissue therapy, all these trips to the doctor… it was terrifying. My professor said he could help me, he could keep me on my trajectory to get where I wanted to be if I worked with him…”
Her eyes grew even darker at that, her face stone. I didn’t like the way she spoke about her piano professor, because I knew without her having to say it that she didn’t trust him and he didn’t favor her. Not that a student needed to be favored to be successful, but if all you ever had was someone riding your ass, it was hard to ever feel like anything but a burden and a failure.
And that’s why she’d pushed herself to injury.
“But, we just didn’t mesh well. And in the end, I left Bramlock for winter break and I never went back.” She sat up straighter. “I’ve been working on my own,” she explained. “And I’m finally playing again, but… I’m rusty. And I’m far from where I need to be at this point… to get to where I want to be.”
“And where is that?”
She let out a long breath, and with the most confidence she’d had all evening, with her eyes locked on mine and her back straight, she said the last thing I expected.
“Carnegie Hall.”
It took every ounce of muscle control I had not to let my eyebrows shoot up into my hairline or my mouth flop open on the kitchen island. Instead, I took a drink of water, letting her words sink in.
“So, you want to be a concert pianist?”
Sarah nodded. “I do. But, I want Carnegie. I want a solo. I want…” She smiled for the first time all evening, hope shooting out of her eyes like visible stars. “I want to be on the Ronald O. Perelman Stage. I want to be one of the greats. I want to be at the top of the entire city’s list when they think of who they want playing their piano for an upcoming concert.”
Right then and there, I wanted to reach over and pet her hand like she was a young girl who didn’t understand what she was asking. But I knew better, because though Sarah was young, I knew just from hearing all she’d endured that she wasn’t stupid. She knew what she was asking. She knew the odds.
And still, she was here.
I stood without another word, draining the last of the water in my glass and wishing it was beer as I considered everything she’d said. It was far from what I expected to walk into, and far from what I felt I could achieve as a piano teacher. Still, I held my hand out toward the room that housed my baby grand piano, quieting my pessimistic thoughts as I looked down at the hopeful girl seated at my kitchen island.
“I think it’s time I heard you play, Miss Henderson.”
Sarah
He doesn’t think I can do it.
I knew it before I even sat down at his baby grand piano, feeling the keys under my fingers as I warmed up with his eyes on me. He’d listened to every word I’d said in that kitchen, and he hadn’t said anything that should have made me feel like he didn’t have faith in me.
He didn’t have to.
It was all in the way he watched me, in the way he didn’t smile, didn’t nod or assure me in any way that what I wanted was achievable.
But he wasn’t the first one who didn’t believe in me.
And he wouldn’t be the first one I proved wrong.
A candle burned in the corner of the room with a warm vanilla scent as I got familiar with the piano, my wrists and fingers warming up with each note. My stomach churned a little as I played, just like it had when I sat down at a piano ever since that last night at Bramlock. I used to feel the cool keys under my skin and get a tingle of joy, one that flowed from my neck to my toes. I used to smile, and instantly feel in my zone, in my element.