The Music Teacher Part 3

WHEN YOU GET a student like Hallie, you have to make a decision.

Will you make her great?

Actually, that comes at the end of several small decisions, the first of which is, Will I teach her at all? Will I invest myself? Will I put in all the work and the hope? Once you have made the decision, nothing can stop you. Because it is no longer about the student. Now it is about the teacher. The teacher makes a choice to live her ambitions through a person other than herself. To invest in your student is in many ways to let go of your own dream.

Parents do this all the time with their children. And it f.u.c.ks them up. I know, because I teach those kids. And when I made the decision to teach Hallie, I suddenly understood the ambitious parents. It's far too hard to let a dream die completely. Before you do that, you will pa.s.s it on to another person, whether she wants it or not.

Hallie wanted it. She would come into the lesson room looking like something that cat dragged in, pale with red-rimmed eyes and matted hair. Her expression was a kaleidoscope of anger, indifference, resignation, and desire. She would argue with me for the first ten minutes of the lesson. About anything and everything. Sometimes she would announce, "I didn't practice. I hate practicing." When I said that was fine, she'd come up with something else. She'd say, "I hate this f.u.c.king instrument, and the only reason I'm playing it is to p.i.s.s off my so-called parents."

I'd say, "Well, that's as good a reason as any to play music. What do you think got Bruce Springsteen started? You think his parents were pleased as punch to have a rock musician in the family?"

Once, she considered this and smiled. "I'll bet they're happy to have a rock star in the family now."

"Well, yeah," I said. "And that's one reason he did it. To show them."

Her face deflated, and she said, "I don't want to show them anything."

"Not now. Maybe later."

And then we got down to studying.

Sometimes she'd tell me about her family. Once, in between songs, she said, "You have no idea what it's like to live in my house."

I smiled and said, "Bet I do."

"Did you like your parents?"

"Sometimes. I like them now because they are dead."

Her face came alive with interest.

"How'd they die?" she asked.

"My mother died of a stroke just a few years ago. My father died ten years ago, from cancer. But he had been dying a long time."

"How?" she asked.

"I don't think he ever really liked being alive."

"Why?"

"Because he'd given up on so many things."

"What things?"

I didn't know how to tell her what things. My father's past was a mystery to me. But he was angry, and most of that rage flew in circles and swooped like a bat toward anything beautiful. Music in particular. He didn't want anyone to have it, which I figured meant he must have wanted it at some time and was forced away from it. By what? Overly religious parents or some ambitions he didn't even possess? The woman he married? I remembered him talking, too, about being good at art when he was in school. But then he went into the army. And then it all dropped off into the confusion of my own existence.

I didn't say any of this to her because no matter how tempting it might become, you do not use your students as therapists.

I did say something like this: "I think he had a talent of some kind and he misplaced it."

"How do you do that?" she asked.

"So many ways, Hallie. So many."

But she just rolled her eyes at me and started in on her scales. She thought I was talking about practicing.

PATRICK IS THE ONLY person in the store when I come in. Patrick is mostly quiet, doing his bit in the store and recording music (he says) in his spare time. He has an interesting history, we've all decided, though we don't know what it is. He doesn't play in a band. He doesn't come from money. (He's from the Midwest, we think, the son of a farmer.) Maybe he has a second job, but if he does, he doesn't talk about it. Patrick doesn't talk about anything. When he does talk, he speaks in a slow tw.a.n.g, and his long eyelashes flutter. This is why everyone speculates as to his s.e.xual preference. That and the Hawaiian shirts he insists on wearing nearly every day. Franklin and Ernest brag about their exploits with women, and Clive gets his heart broken about once a week by the same woman, who simply will not commit to being with a poor musician. So they feel they are safe. Another thing they don't trust about Patrick is that he won't identify what instrument he plays. We know he plays something because he talks so knowledgeably about music and can sight-read, but he doesn't teach lessons, and no one has ever seen him pick up an instrument.

"It's just theory," Franklin sometimes speculates. "He's just a music-theory nerd. He doesn't play anything. He's one of those weirdos who reads music but can't do anything with it."

"So why do you keep him on?" asks Ernest, who feels that everyone should justify their existence at McCoy's, as if we were all working at NASA. Ernest, as a Texan, somehow equates playing an instrument with fist fighting. Not for the soft or cowardly. He doesn't trust anyone who uses a capo on a guitar-a fact that he once whispered to me when Franklin was across the room, showing off on a Martin signature series of some kind. Franklin loved the capo. He had dissertations about the importance of the capo. Ernest said, "If your hand can't grab the chord, then walk the f.u.c.k away from it."

Do you see what I'm saying? Do you see?

Back when we had the Wednesday night discussion group, Patrick always stayed but never discussed anything. He simply hung around to listen. He leaned against the counter and smiled at our impa.s.sioned debates, rarely offering an opinion. Sometimes he laughed when things got particularly heated, and this would make Franklin angry.

"You think music is funny? Is that what you think?"

"Well, a little bit," Patrick would say in his deliberate, nasally tone. "But I think most things are funny."

"Maybe if you actually played an instrument, you'd understand how serious it is."

"Maybe so," Patrick would say. He knew the rule. If you want to drive someone crazy, just keep agreeing with him. Franklin would give up on arguing with him, and then the playing would start. When Ernest and Clive and Franklin and I played, Patrick would get a sad, dreamy, faraway look in his eyes, as if he were remembering a better time. Had he once known how to play an instrument? Had he lost that ability, like someone who had lost the ability to walk or speak?

When he lets me in, Patrick says, "Hey, Pearl. How's it going?"

"Pretty good. How's it going with you?"

"Not bad," he says.

We're like some Protestant family that has learned not to discuss anything substantial.

Patrick is my age, with hair down to his shoulders, which he sometimes pulls back into a ponytail. He has a nice white trash kind of face and scary blue eyes. My own eyes are green, but I feel like I can't trust anyone with light-colored eyes. It's as if we aren't finished.

He reminds me of Townes Van Zandt. I say to him, this particular morning, "You remind me of Townes Van Zandt."

Townes Van Zandt is a martyr for anyone who appreciates music in the country / bluegra.s.s / alternative rock realm. He was a poet who wrote and recorded songs that made you want to open a vein. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, and a lifelong alcoholic, he died suddenly following hip surgery. When he died, his daughter is purported to have said, "Daddy had an argument with his heart." He would have liked that description.

Patrick smirks and says, "Thanks."

"What? You don't like Townes Van Zandt?"

He says, "Well, yeah. I kind of like the dentist, too, because I'm mildly attracted to pain. But you can't take it every day."

"So you listen to him every six months?"

"About like that."

I move to the cash register and start counting the private lesson tickets that have not been incorporated into the financial well. Patrick stands next to me, watching.

Patrick says, "If you're keeping score, you still have the most private lessons."

"It's not a compet.i.tion. But Clive is ahead of me."

"It's not a compet.i.tion? Around here? Don't tell anybody."

I lose count, then start again. As I near the end, I turn to him and say, "Why don't you have any students?"

Patrick shrugs and says, "I hate teaching. Why do you have so many students?"

"Because I don't hate teaching."

He laughs. I don't know how to respond to that. So I say, "You could make more money if you taught lessons."

"I don't care much about money."

"Don't you have to worry about rent?"

"No. I don't have to worry about that. I don't have to worry about anything. Neither do you."

"Are you getting all Buddhist on me or something?"

"Oh, no," he says, as if the talk has suddenly turned serious. "I was raised Lutheran. But I'm religiously unaffiliated."

"Why don't you have to worry about rent?" I ask.

Patrick shakes his head, as if he only wants to clear the hair from his face.

I say, "Patrick, everyone wants to know your story."

He smiles. "Everyone wants to find the Holy Grail. But to do that, you have to get on a horse."

"Okay, whatever," I say as I put the lesson tickets away.

Patrick leans against the counter, looks at me, and says, "Pearl, why do you take him on?"

"Who?"

"Franklin. Why do you want to prove anything to him?"

"I don't want to prove anything. I just want to keep my job."

"You have your job. Franklin would never fire you. He's in love with you."

"No, he's not. Don't say that."

It doesn't matter how much I love Franklin. I want to be employed for my talent.

Patrick smiles. His long eyelashes float down, then back up.

He says, "The whole dilemma between men and women is they've tried all the configurations and now they're bored. The genders are out of ideas."

I say, "So what? People run out of ideas. It happens. Your beloved Paul Simon ran out of ideas. So he went to South Africa to get some new ones. That's where Graceland came from. A dearth of ideas."

He laughs. "You aren't going to get me on that one. I don't care enough to argue."

"Why not?"

Patrick says, "I was talking about relationships between men and women. You abruptly shifted. You're trying to figure me out. You're looking for clues."

"Clues? I don't think you're that much of a puzzle."

"No, I'm not. I just have a policy. Wait until asked."

"And what, no one ever asks?"

"No one ever does," he says, and goes away whistling.

I can't resist. He is making me do it: "Okay, Patrick. What instrument do you play?"

He turns and smiles. "All of them."

"What do you mean, *all of them'?"

Still smiling: "None of them."

"Which is it?"

"It's both," he says, and disappears behind the books.

I HAD NO HOPES of Hallie's showing for our second lesson. Hallie was not what we call in violin-teaching parlance a sure thing. A sure thing is a student whose parents are so invested in their child's musical future that they force him or her to take lessons. This works until the child enters the early teens. Then the child becomes rebellious, starts acting out. She (I say "she," because it is usually girls who are saddled with this particular burden) stops practicing, starts back-talking the teacher, and generally self-destructs. Not long after that, she examines other outlets for her frustration and turns to cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, bad grades, crime- or sometimes the guitar. At this point the parents become overwhelmed by the situation at hand, and they tell the teacher, in desperate tones, "We simply don't have time for this anymore. We have bigger problems." That's when the music teacher says something like, "Stick with the violin. It's the way out." But the parents have lost faith in music by then. They have turned to counseling, discipline, prescription drugs, or organized religion, all of which roads lead them further into h.e.l.l.

The less traveled path is that the student's enthusiasm for music actually takes off, and by the time she reaches her late teens, she is obviously destined for an actual career in music. At this point the teacher becomes desperate. Here the teacher is faced with a person who is going to embark on the career that she herself has abandoned. It is too hard to face. So the teacher becomes angry and demanding and generally unhelpful. And the parents decide it's not working out, or the student becomes aware that the teacher is no longer interested in teaching, and it all comes to an end.

Maybe they go off and find better teachers. They must. I never get to know what happens after students leave McCoy's. That is, I've never cared enough to try. Except once.

After Hallie, I stopped trying to inhibit my students. I just encourage them, at all levels, for any reason. I don't make them practice and I don't yell at them and I don't put up a fuss when they talk about quitting. Which is why I now have the most students.

Hallie did show up for the second lesson, ten minutes late. I was already packing up, as I had been doing the first time she showed up. Her adopted mother escorted her into the room and said, "How long is this going to take?"

I said, "Mrs. Edwards, it always takes half an hour. But if you show up ten minutes late, it only takes twenty minutes. Which means you have cheated yourself out of the full lesson."

Mrs. Edwards smirked. "I'm not cheating anybody. None of this was my idea. And anyway, it's the state's money."

I said, "Then you are cheating Hallie."