No One Can Know(32)

“Except your life,” she told him.

“Consider yourself an invited guest,” he said with his slantwise smile.

Their families hate each other. The details of it are murky to Emma. His father worked for hers until very recently. There were accusations of theft on one side, mismanagement on the other. But Kenneth Mahoney is a drunk and a deadbeat, and no one was surprised he’d gotten himself fired from another job.

“What is that?” a sharp voice asks.

She turns. Her mother stands in the doorway. She is dressed, as she nearly always is, as if she is about to walk out the door to a charity brunch at any second. Pearls at her neck and her nails shiny, perfect ovals, buffed and polished.

“It’s a portrait of Mrs. Mahoney’s grandson,” Emma says simply, as if this is completely neutral information.

“We’re painting portraits of boys now?” her mother asks in that same sharp tone.

Emma rolls her eyes. “It’s just a portrait, Mom. It’s not like I drew him in the nude.”

Her mother stiffens. “I hear you’ve been hanging around together.”

Tension locks into place down Emma’s spine. There is danger in this conversation. The truth is no defense against her mother’s suspicions. It would only make things worse. “He lives with Mrs. Mahoney. He’s around the house a lot, if that’s what you mean,” Emma says.

“So you’re not sleeping with him?”

“Mom!” She stares at her. She’s never even kissed anyone. There isn’t time for it, even if there were a boy in town who didn’t think she was weird and unapproachable.

Her mother makes a noise in the back of her throat. “You should have been downstairs ten minutes ago. It’s time to practice,” she snaps.

“I’ll practice later,” Emma says. When her mother is in a good mood, sometimes she can get away with half an hour after dinner, instead of the full hour she’s supposed to plink away at the piano. Her fingers are dexterous enough, but she can’t hear the music the way Juliette can. It’s all a jumble of disconnected notes to her, and it comes out sounding like it. Daphne is better than she is—competent, and uncomplaining during her hour. For Emma, it’s torture.

“Now, Emma,” her mother says. She waits; Emma complies. She thuds her way down the steps sullenly. In the great room, Juliette sits with her diary. Daphne is in the sunroom, nose in a book. Probably about something horribly gruesome like the black plague or witch trials, or a detailed explanation of pressing as an execution method, which Emma will enjoy hearing about later, out of their mother’s earshot.

Emma takes her seat. “Posture,” her mother tells her. She straightens her shoulders, stacks each vertebra in painful overcompliance. Fingers on the keys. “Hands,” her mother tells her; she straightens her wrists, relaxes her fingers. She runs through simple scales mechanically as her mother stands ramrod straight and perfectly still at her shoulder.

Her mother selects the first piece. Emma knows what the notes mean; she can read music fluently enough. But the sequence never resolves in her mind to anything other than fragments of information, refusing to cohere. She can’t hear it the way she can see a painting. She can’t sense the whole, and so even when she manages to follow the notes precisely, it somehow never sounds like the same song that Juliette plays.

“Faster here,” her mother tells her, and “Posture,” and “Watch your breathing,” but none of it changes the fact that she is a dull, plodding player, not a musician, not a talent like Juliette. Her fingers ache. She’s held a paintbrush half the day already, and her back has a lick of acidic heat running up beside her spine.

“Pay attention,” her mother snaps. “If you practiced more, you wouldn’t struggle so much.”

“Maybe the piano just hates me,” Emma grouses.

Her mother glares down at her. “You are perfectly capable if you apply yourself. Keep going.”

Emma grits her teeth. She plays on. She speeds up, speeds up more, until her fingers are stumbling drunkenly. Dropping a note, smashing down two keys instead of one, notes tumbling together in a muddle of noise. Her mother says her name. She keeps going. Brutishly forcing her way through the music, shouldering each bar aside to get to its end. Her mother says her name again—a third time—

Irene Palmer reaches out, grabs the fallboard, and slams it shut. Emma whips her hands back. Not quite fast enough. Emma shrieks. Pulls her left hand free, cradles it against her chest, two fingers in sudden agony. Her mother looks down at her with her mouth in a faint O.

Emma laughs. The sound is stretched obscenely, the pain making her shake. She looks down at her hand. The index finger is fine, probably, bruised. The middle finger is swelling quickly, and she knows at a glance that it’s broken. “Guess I can’t play now,” she rasps out.

“Go to your room,” her mother manages, pointing with arm outstretched, like she is claiming control of the situation in the only way she can.

Emma stands, hand still cupped against her chest. She looks at Juliette, who is staring at the floor. She looks at Daphne, staring openly from the sunroom, her book abandoned beside her. She laughs again, a sound that turns to brambles in her throat. Her mother sees that she isn’t moving, isn’t obeying, but her eyes flick away. To argue is to cede more control.