“Andrew, did you—did you write this yourself?” He looked down at the floor, nodded his assent.
Esther removed her coat and sat at the piano bench. After studying the sheet for a few more minutes, she slowly tapped out the tune. Once she was done, she turned back to Andrew, his face now creased by anxiety.
“Andrew—Andrew, did you write this piece? Are you sure you wrote this, because, well, it seems more expert.” The boy’s eyes shifted to the checkered linoleum floor briefly, then up again.
“Mrs. Stein, I didn’t steal it. I swear!”
“Oh no, Andrew, I didn’t mean that. It’s just that I’m not sure how to describe it.”
Esther looked up at the ceiling, trying to grasp invisible words. It was one of the few times she wished that her English was better, more adequate. But she didn’t have time for more consideration, for the other students had begun to saunter into class and were already setting up stands and opening their instrument cases.
“Andrew, if you don’t mind, I’d like to hold on to this for a while until our next session.” He nodded, and still averting her gaze, assumed a seat on the piano bench while she walked toward the podium at the front of the class.
Later, after the last student had left, she removed the melody from the back of her piano instruction book. She ran her fingers along the keyboard, stumbling across the notes, correcting a couple of errors where the tune sounded off, marking the points that were unclear. But then she played it once more, listening as the notes spilled happily out into the air like hummingbirds freed from the nest. Then, letting her hands fall from the keyboard, she listened again as the tune played itself through the silence. And she found she still hadn’t the words to describe it. An ascension on the wind and, after, a low mournful plunge where the melody moved as if on a current of succeeding waves. And yet, not quite. Her eyes sought the title. She believed the dedication was a secret infatuation, although she knew of no one by that name in any of her classes.
Only when she heard the sweep of the custodian’s broom against the hall floors and, looking up, realized that an edge of darkness had begun to dim the gray sky outdoors, did Esther get up, gather her attaché case and purse, and shut the door behind her. And when she did, she came to yet another decision.
“Jacob, I have a favor to ask of you.” The two had been watching the latest episode of Charlie’s Angels, a favorite. Esther had once even considered having her hair styled like Jacob’s professed crush, Farrah Fawcett.
Jacob, ever in the leather recliner, leaned forward, slightly annoyed at the interruption.
“What is it, Esther? Is something wrong?”
“No, of course not. Nothing’s wrong. I just had this idea, and I wanted to ask something of you.”
She paused, traced the matching blue satin sofa pillow with the tip of her finger. “Well, Jacob, there is a student. Maybe you have heard me speak of him? His name is Andrew Becker, and he’s in my special program after school. Well, he is—how shall I say this? The most extraordinary. Before this year, he’d never even put his finger on a piano key. He showed such an interest that I worked with him, some elementary tunes at first, but now, after only a year and a half, Jacob, he can play as well as I! But that’s not all—he writes music. How he writes! He has written a sonata which has a tone like—I don’t know—the voices of angels. ‘For Isabel.’”
Jacob scratched the side of his nose and sighed, exasperated. “Esther, this is all very nice, but what does this have to do with us?”
“Not with us exactly. With me. The boy is quick, near genius, and I was wondering if maybe I could work with him, see what new masterpiece springs forth from his mind. It would be a couple of days after school, and I’d still make sure to have time for my schoolwork, have dinners ready by the time you would get home, never meet him on our weekends. And the best part is this could bring in a little extra money. So what do you say?”
Jacob shrugged in the same way he did whenever Esther approached him with a new idea.
“Esther, why should I stop you from tutoring? You are a modern woman, after all, the Betty Friedman of Brooklyn!” He returned his gaze to the TV just as the angels had begun to chase a criminal across a bridge.
Friedan, Esther thought as she sat back against the soft pillow, a contented smile appearing on her face. Her name is Betty Friedan.
Getting his father’s permission for the weekly lesson proved easy, and within the month Andrew was seated, his knobby-kneed giraffe legs bent under him, on the piano bench of the glossy baby grand in Esther’s living room.