The Music Teacher Part 8

"Why not?"

"She loves them more than me. She'll kick me out."

"She can't do that. She won't. Besides, I've talked to her. She's quite fond of you." I wasn't sure this was true, but I hoped it was.

She has recognized "it," I wanted to tell her. She knows there's gold in the hills.

Hallie looked away from me. "The family is all in place," she said. "They're a unit. They have church and everything. I'm an intrusion. Is that the right word?"

"I guess," I said.

"If I'm trouble, they'll make me leave. I have nowhere else to go."

"They can't hurt you. It's not allowed."

"No one is hurting me," she said in a high, desperate tone.

Then she looked up at me with her sad, dark eyes, a look that was not so unlike Franklin's worried gaze. "They'll make me stop playing music. I can't stop playing music. I can't."

This was a far cry from her original incantation: "You can't make me play. I won't let you." I couldn't decide if this was progress or regression or something in the middle, like guidance.

"No one can take music away from you," I said in my inst.i.tutional teacher's voice.

And then she looked at me with a maturity I did not recognize in myself, let alone in my students. Her face was pale and as still as granite.

"Of course they can take it away," she said. "They want to and they will. You know that. You know it's always a breath away from being gone."

"No, Hallie, I don't know that. You have an ability. An understanding. No one can take that away. And this is unrelated to music. This is about you being hurt."

"I'm not being hurt," she said.

She swiveled her body away from me in her folding chair. She held the violin next to her chest as if it were a baby that needed comforting.

I said, "Look, I'm a teacher. I'm a mandated reporter."

"I don't know what that means."

"It means that if I see someone being hurt, I'm obligated to tell."

She lifted her head. "Tell who?"

"People who care about things like this."

She laughed. "Who the h.e.l.l are those people?"

I was stretching the truth a little because I was only a music teacher. We weren't officially mandated reporters like public school teachers. But I suspected that if I went to some kind of authority, they would listen.

I said, "Hallie, the world isn't as indifferent as it seems. There are people who care about children."

Her eyes grew sad when I said this.

"I'm not a child," she told me, as if telling me she weren't a person.

"You are."

"Let's not talk about it anymore, okay? If you're someone who turns people in to authorities, I don't think I can come here anymore. Because you sold yourself to me as someone who doesn't believe in authority."

"I did? How did I do that?"

"You're a music teacher. That's not about authority. What we do in here, it's just about music."

"Music can't make you safe."

"Of course it can," she said. She lifted her violin to her chin. "Let's keep going."

We finished the lesson. I said nothing to Dorothy. The next week, the bruises had faded, and then there was nothing but alabaster skin. Her wrists grew strong, her bowing excelled, and I allowed myself to be lulled by the music, the eternal Pied Piper, until nothing else mattered but the sound of notes and chords and tones, drifting on the air like smoke from the chimney of the Vatican.

7.

IT'S ON A FRIDAY EVENING, when I'm in charge of locking up the store, that I figure out the real reason Franklin wants to fire Clive.

My last student is late, so I'm half an hour behind, and it being a Friday, I'm eager to get out. Not because I have any special plans-it's been a while since I've taken any orchestra or session work, and much longer since I've had any kind of social life to attend to. I'm just tired of being at McCoy's, and I'm feeling a little cranky after a conversation I had with my ex-husband earlier in the day. He called me at the store to give me some good news and some bad news. He said, "Stephanie's pregnant, and I'm not sure I can keep paying for your car."

I let a cold moment of silence go past before I said, "Where's the good news?"

"Stephanie's pregnant," he repeats.

"And who is that good news for?"

"Pearl, don't do this. You knew we were trying."

"I knew Stephanie was trying. You said you weren't interested. Or did I dream that?"

"Well, it's too late now, and I'll get happy about it eventually."

"Are you going to marry her?"

"Maybe. I don't know. The point is, I have to start saving money."

"How far along is she?"

"Two months," he says.

I stop myself from saying the very mean thing. It's early yet. Anything can happen. Clearly he has forgotten both of my miscarriages, one at ten weeks, one at fourteen. Maybe Stephanie's uterus is stronger than mine. Maybe he loves her more than he ever loved me. But I can't think about that. I have to focus on the possibility that she will encounter some kind of misfortune, that she won't just move in and take over my life and do all the things I couldn't do, such as keeping him interested. I'm pretty sure it's okay for me to want bad things to happen to her. But if I want bad things to happen to her unborn child, that might be crossing a line. I try to stop just short of being a bad person. It's harder than it sounds.

So instead of the very mean thing, I said the sort of mean thing: "Will Stephanie have to give up her work in telemarketing?"

"Pearl, don't be this way. We don't have any formal financial arrangement. I was paying for your car as a favor."

"I see. And I suppose I didn't ask for alimony as a favor. If all favors are off now, perhaps I should get a lawyer."

Which is a hollow threat, because once you waive alimony, there's no going back. Not to mention that I can't afford a lawyer.

Mark says, "Look, the car is almost paid off. You'll just have to pick up the insurance payments. You might have to do a little more moonlighting, pick up some extra students. Is that really the end of the world?"

No, it wasn't really the end of the world. Nor is it the end of the world when the man you love starts looking at you like you're a stain on the carpet and shortly after that starts sleeping with a college student.

The world doesn't end, ever, apparently, despite all the warnings to the contrary. And that might be the bad news.

Probably what's bothering me is that the world isn't ending or even standing still. It keeps going with things like Stephanie's getting pregnant and my having to pay for my car, and that means I'm going to have to keep going with it.

So I told him to stop the car payments, of course, stop the insurance payments, I'd get by somehow. In the end I was gracious, even congratulated him on his progeny, wished him well, and then hung up. I got out of the call before I revealed my truest fear, which was that the car payment was the only real connection I still had to him, and that now he would go away forever, and that it might be the best thing for me, and that I might have to let go of this long-held resentment, and that this long-held resentment was what kept me interested.

I didn't love him anymore. I didn't. I didn't because I told myself I didn't, daily, when I brushed my teeth and drank my orange juice and warmed up my scales.

Now I would have to find something else to engage me. Maybe it would be the Trailer Park Rogues.

All of this is going through my mind as I'm closing up the store, so it takes me a while to realize that Clive is still hovering nearby, pretending to arrange guitar straps on the wall. I know he has clocked out because I checked all the time cards as part of my closing-up duty. I say, "Clive, what are you still doing here?"

He grins at me. Clive is from Los Angeles, which is something that almost no one is, except for people his age. The Los Angelenos of his generation have names like Clive and Harry and Gerard and Simon, names that the rest of the country left behind in England, along with stiff social mores and colonial rule. Like most musicians of his generation, he tried a stint back east before figuring out that it is cold and unfriendly to Californians. Most places on earth are cold and unfriendly to Californians, as one of Joni Mitch.e.l.l's better songs taught us. (She was actually from Saskatchewan, Canada, which also no one is.) I played that song for him once, and I saw his eyes fill up with awareness. That's why he always compares me to Joni Mitch.e.l.l, because I played her songs for him and now he thinks we are one and the same.

Like most native Californians, he is baby-faced and scrubbed, his hair is naturally blond, though he has dyed it black (the blond roots peek through defiantly), and he has too many earrings in both ears, which suggests that he is actually too chicken to pierce anything else. I like that in a person.

In answer to my question, he says, "I'll walk you to your car."

"My car is right out front."

"Still, you shouldn't be here alone. With all that money and stuff. It's not safe."

I am about to remind him that Franklin will walk me to my car, which he usually does, but tonight he is not here. Clive reads my thoughts and says, "Franklin took off early. Maybe he has a gig somewhere, with that new band of his."

"No," I say. "That's impossible."

"Why?"

"Because I'm in that band of his."

"Oh, really? Can you get me in it, too?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. Ask Franklin."

He shrugs, looks at his fingernails. "Franklin doesn't like me."

"That's not true," I say automatically, even though I know he is fixated on firing Clive.

Clive, who is smarter than anyone gives him credit for, says, "He doesn't like ba.s.s players. That's pretty common."

"He can't dislike you because of your instrument. You're good at it. That's why he hired you. You have more students than I do."

"More than Ernest, too."

"And more than Patrick."

"Who doesn't have any."

"That's because he doesn't play an instrument," I say.

"Sure, he does," Clive says.

"Oh? Which one?"

Clive thinks about it, then says, "I don't know, but he must play one. He knows so much about music. Listen to him talk."

"Franklin thinks he's a theory nerd."

"You can't learn about music from theory. You have to play," Clive informs me, as if I don't know that.

"Well, no one can identify his instrument. If you want to take that on as your mission, then go with G.o.d."

He shrugs again, stuffing his hands into his jeans pockets. "I just want to walk you to your car."

"Fine," I say. "Walk me."

We take about ten steps outside the door, him lugging his ba.s.s, me carrying my violin.

When we get to my car, I get mad all over again, thinking of my conversation with Mark. Suddenly I don't want to touch the car anymore. We used to ride around in it. We used to take it up the coast, to Malibu, for picnics, hanging out on the beach until the sun started to set. Then we'd find a dive bar and drink to the point where one of us still felt safe to drive, and then we'd go home. No more. No more.

As I'm putting my violin in the trunk, Clive says, "Listen, I want to take you to dinner."

I slam the trunk shut, then look at him.

"Why?" I ask.

He shrugs.

"You mean tonight?" I ask.