The Lucy Variations Read online

  But her mother wasn’t there to check. She’d stayed home to take care of Grandma Beck, whose bad cold had suddenly become pneumonia. So Lucy’s dad had come instead to Prague, for the festival. Grandpa Beck, too, of course, because he believed he had to be at everything. Later, Lucy didn’t understand how he could have left his sick wife behind the way he did.

  She was talking to two of the other pianists playing the festival but, unlike her, not competing: a guy from Tokyo and a girl from a European city Lucy didn’t quite catch over the noise of the room, whose name was Liesel or Louisa or something. They were both older than she was by about ten years, both good enough English speakers to talk about the pieces they were playing, where else they’d travelled recently, and where they were going next.

  “I think I’m doing Tanglewood this summer,” Lucy told them.

  It sounded impressive. Not that she wanted to go to Tanglewood. As she hadn’t wanted to do so many of the things that filled her time: the concerts and festivals and recording sessions and competitions that took her around the world and caused her to miss such massive chunks of school that she wasn’t officially enrolled any more. Instead she worked with various tutors from the University of San Francisco. Marnie and cute Bennett and sometimes Allison.

  She hadn’t even wanted to come to the Prague, which only took fifteen pianists in her age group from around the world. Out of thousands of applicants, she’d made it. There’d been a party. Grandma Beck wouldn’t let anyone else pick the flowers or the food. Lucy’s dad bought her a white-gold necklace with an L pendant to congratulate her, and Gus got all caught up in imagining himself at the same festival one day. Grace Chang, her teacher, took Lucy out for a special dinner to strategize a repertoire.

  The thing was, Lucy hadn’t even applied.

  Her mother had filled out the form and sent in the CD.

  “I didn’t want you to be disappointed if you didn’t get in,” her mom had said.

  Right, Lucy had thought. More like you didn’t want to give me the chance to say no.

  That was when Lucy still believed that rocking the boat was the worst thing a person could do, and it didn’t even cross her mind to try to back out.

  The guy from Tokyo leaned forwards as if he had misheard her. “Tanglewood?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  He exchanged a glance with Liesel/Louisa, who said, “Wow.”

  Lucy hadn’t meant to brag. It could be hard to find the line between sharing credentials in an effort to fit in and showing off. “It’s just part of this new youth-spotlight thing they’re going to try…”

  “Excuse me,” Liesel/Louisa said, looking across the room as if she saw someone she had to go talk to.

  Tokyo stayed. “Have you ever been to Japan?” He had long, shaggy hair, like a lot of the guy musicians had, to show the world they may be music nerds but they were rebel music nerds.

  “Once. When I was, like, eight.”

  He started to reply when Grandpa Beck appeared at Lucy’s elbow.

  “Lucy, let me introduce you to someone.” He too;t dquo; Hk her arm and pulled her away from the conversation. She scanned the room for her dad and didn’t see him. “Your father is up in our room. And don’t get too friendly with the competition.”

  “They’re not the competition.”

  “Everyone is the competition.”

  She shivered in the arctic climate of the hotel ballroom while her grandfather ferried her around and made her talk to everyone he thought important: an up-and-coming conductor, an international booking agent, a Grammy-winning producer of classical albums. Lucy smiled and nodded a lot, hearing about half of what was said.

  They left the party. In the elevator to their suite, Grandpa Beck turned to her. “You did well in there, Lucy. I’m proud of you.” His eyes were soft, and he touched her shoulder with real affection. “This is an important festival, and there’s a buzz about you. They all know who you are.”

  She did like that part. Being somebody. Even if it meant certain people were jealous or thought she was too young to get the kind of attention she did.

  Being a concert pianist didn’t win her any special respect from the kids she’d been at school with. Even her best friend, Reyna, didn’t know and wouldn’t care that she could nail a Rachmaninov allegro. But in places like this, she knew she mattered.

  “How’s Grandma?” she asked as they exited the elevator and walked over the hotel’s ornate carpet.

  “Just fine.”

  “Let’s call her. I want to say hi.” And she wanted to hear Gus’s voice, and ask her mom’s advice about how to wear her hair for the main part of the competition.

  He pulled back the sleeve of his suit jacket to check his watch. “It’s complicated with the time difference. We don’t want to interrupt her rest.”

  Before leaving for Prague, Lucy’d gone into her grandmother’s room to say goodbye, but she’d been asleep. Lucy had stared for a few minutes at her face: powdered and tweezed but also naturally beautiful. The face of a woman who was kind without being a pushover. Someone who’d managed to live with Grandpa Beck for more than fifty years without killing him.

  “I don’t want to go,” Lucy had whispered, hoping Grandma would open her eyes and say she didn’t have to.

  Her mother had heard. “You’re just nervous,” she’d said softly, joining her on the edge of Grandma’s bed.

  Lucy had turned to her. Maybe there, in that quiet space, the afternoon light filtering through the gauzy curtains, dust motes in the beams and only the sound of Grandma’s breathing, her mother would listen. “I’m not nervous. I feel like I should stay here.”

  “You have to go, honey. It’s the Prague.”

  Lucy had looked back at her grandmother. “Isn’t this a family emergency?”

  “Grandma’s going to be fine. And you won’t do her any good by not going.”

  Lying awake in the Prague hotel room, Lucy had the sense that something wasn’t right.

  Her parents hadn’t given her cell phone international access. She got out of bed and went into the suite’s living room, in search of her father’s phone. He was asleep on the pull-out sofa bed; Grandpa Beck’s room had two kings, but he wasn&rsquo wae wasn&;t sharing. She found the phone and crept back to her room, got under the covers, and called her mom.

  “Marc, it must be the middle of the night there,” her mother said as an answer.

  “It’s me.”

  “Lucy?”

  “I want to talk to Grandma.”

  A pause. “You can’t right now, honey. I’m sorry.”

  “She’s sleeping?”

  “We’re actually at the hospital,” her mother said. “She’s okay,” she added quickly, “but she’s resisting the antibiotics a little bit. And just needs some help breathing. She’s fine, Lucy. It’s all routine for someone her age.”

  “Does Grandpa know?”

  “Yes.”

  Why hadn’t he said something? “Is Gus with you?” she asked her mother.

  “No, there’s no reason for him to be. Because everything is all right. You just concentrate on your job over there.”

  “She’s really okay?” Is there a tube in her throat? Does it hurt?

  “Yes.”

  “Tell Gus I say hi. And tell Grandma I love her.”

  “I will. Get some sleep.”

  Lucy hung up and realized she’d forgotten to as

  k her mom about how she should wear her hair.

  Lucy heard Gus coming up the stairs that connected her room in the attic to the third floor, where his was, and knew she’d overslept. Again. Her mother thought she did it on purpose, as if she sat around twenty-four hours a day thinking up Ways to Piss Off Mom. The truth was simple: she stayed up too late. All the time.

  She scrambled out of bed, and by the time Gus came in had on school khakis and sneakers plus the sweatshirt she’d slept in. “Give me two minutes.”
She dug through a pile in her walk-in closet, in search of a sweater. Or maybe not a sweater. Maybe a polo. “What’s it like out?”

  Gus went to one of the little windows under the eaves and squeakily twisted open the blind. “It looks…beige.”

  Sweater. Lucy finished dressing in the closet, grabbed her book bag and a hair clip, and followed Gus downstairs. She kept him between her and her mother, who stood waiting in the hall, in the exact spot recently occupied by Temnikova’s body on a gurney. Lucy almost said something about it: They covered her face. The wheels got caught on the hallway table. I had to move it a little to the left, see?

  But her mother already had her hand on the doorknob; no time to acknowledge death.

  “I’m not even going to say it, Lucy.”

  “You could leave without me, you know.”

  “Sure. Then you could skip school entirely.”

  Her mother walked out, and Lucy said to Gus, “When we get in the car, ask if we can stop for coffee.”

  “You ask her.”

  It was one thing to live on an average of four hours of sleep a connight; quite another to do it without caffeine. She’d have to make a dash for CC’s – the closest coffee shop to school – after her mom dropped her off.

  Outside the house a gust of wind blew up the hill, carrying the smell of some bacony breakfast cooking nearby – maybe at one of the restaurants on Union Street. Last year she and Allison would sometimes have their tutoring sessions at Rose’s or Ella’s; Rose’s for the smoked-salmon breakfast pizza, Ella’s for the chicken hash.

  Lucy’s stomach growled. Chalk one up in the “pro” column for being a semi-famous pianist: leisurely breakfasts. After a few years off of a normal school schedule, and only recently back on, she didn’t get why first period had to be so early.

  Gus sat in the front seat, and Lucy brushed her hair and put it back in the clip.

  At the junction at the bottom of the hill, she allowed herself one red light’s worth of guilt. Being late so often actually was kind of rude, she knew that. But she had to be careful with guilt. Once she went off that edge, the downwards slide might never stop.

  It would start with feeling bad for being the kind of person who made people wait and for not showing her mom more basic courtesy. That would lead to guilt over not being grateful for the life she had and for not making good use of her privilege. Grandpa Beck had a lot to say about Making Good Use of Privilege; it was the family religion. Then there was what happened in Prague after all that time and money spent. Or invested. Thrown away? However you wanted to put it.

  Time and money her parents would never get back. That Lucy would never get back.

  Time, that was the main thing. Years of it.

  Aka: her childhood. Gone.

  But what was the point of going there? Nothing could be done about it. Except maybe for Gus, who now bore the sole responsibility for achieving something really special in the family name. All that pressure, a weight they used to share, was his alone, thanks to her. Which brought her back to…

  Guilt.

  So she tried to stop herself at mild remorse over hitting the snooze button a few too many times.

  When they pulled up to Gus’s school, the other kids were already going inside.

  “Hurry,” their mother said. “I’m sorry Lucy couldn’t be on time.”

  Lucy leaned her head on the seat back and sighed.

  Speare Academy was generally known to be the second-best private high school in San Francisco, where you went if you came from a family that could afford it, and if you couldn’t get into Parker Day, which only had like eighty spots.

  Other than having to be somewhere so early in the morning, Lucy liked it. She’d gone there for the last quarter of sophomore year, which involved a lot of time in the library, doing independent study to catch up with her classmates, the majority of whom she still didn’t really know. She had her best friend, Reyna, and sometimes Carson Lin, and that was fine by her; being part of huge groups was never her thing.

  This year what she most loved about Speare was Mr. Charles.

  Today he wore the shirt-and-tie combination she especially liked. The shirt: your basic Brooks Brothers pinstripe, blue. The tie: silver, with tiny purple shapes that she’d once stared at long enough to believe were otters. He also had some good stubble going on, blond and darker blond.

  They stood together at the front of the classroom, the rest of the class already in critique groups. In a whisper she told him the story of Temnikova dying in her arms, how it had upset Gus, the family in shock. And that’s why she was late.

  But her coffee cup from CC’s told the real truth.

  The pleasant flow of caffeine working through her system, the sharpening of her mind that came with it, the comfort of the warm cup in her hand – it all left her suddenly as she realized Mr. Charles was over it. This being-late thing.

  At the start of term, he’d been patient. He understood that the school routine was relatively new to her, and that she was used to functioning independently, more like an adult. Plus she’d been teacher’s pet since the first week of school, when he’d taught some obscure Dylan Thomas poem no one got, and Lucy had made a comment she could not now remember and he’d walked over to her desk to hand her his personal copy of the Thomas book. “In thanks for saving this hour from complete pointlessness,” he’d said.

  After that she started hanging around his room an extra minute or two after class and, once in a while, at lunch. Working with Bennett and Allison and Marnie had made her see teachers less like extra parents and more like older, smarter friends, and that’s how she treated Mr. Charles.

  It had become a crush. And she could be the tiniest bit obsessive about him. He didn’t seem to mind; the gift of the Thomas book proved he thought she was special.

  She also knew that she’d been taking advantage of that.

  “I’m sorry for your family’s loss,” he said. “And I know you’re still adjusting to the schedule. But Lucy, this…no more, okay?”

  “I’m sorry.” She ran her thumb around the sharp under-edge of the coffee lid. “I’m working on it.”

  “Really?” He sounded sceptical, and gestured with his head for her to follow him out into the hall and its ever-present smell of floor wax.

  Lucy caught a glimpse of herself in the glass door of the classroom across the hall. Coffee cup, Italian leather messenger bag, sunglasses she didn’t need in this weather atop her head. Entitled brat. Words her grandfather had used to describe her, just one day after the moment in the elevator when he’d expressed his pride.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  “What’s the deal?” he asked. “I mean it. Teachers are trained to worry that this kind of stuff is a symptom of drug use or major problems at home. But I know you better than that. You’re not doing drugs. You’re not drinking. Your problems at home are normal, even if they don’t always feel like it. I know you like school, and I know you like my class especially.”

  “I do.”

  “So be on time.”

  “I will.” She couldn’t stand how disappointed he was. She wanted their usual friendly talk. “What are those things on your tie, anyway?”

  “What?” He glanced down, picked up the end of his tie, then dropped it. “I had to put my dog to sleep last weekend, Lucy. She was fourteen. My dad got her for me as a high school graduation present. She lived with me in Boston, all through college. She rode across the country in the passenger seat of my car. And I’m on time.” He didn’t sound angry. More like Cry.leg he was about to cry. “Okay?”

  Miserable, Lucy nodded, finding a sliver of comfort in the fact that he’d confided in her about the dog. She could only repeat, “I’m sorry. About your dog, and…” She stared at her shoes. Custom saddle oxfords her mom had bought for her sixteenth birthday. She didn’t know how much they’d cost, but one time a computer file with the teachers’ salaries got leaked among students, and she had a feeling Mr. Charles wouldn
’t be able to afford these shoes. She could at least be on time.

  Fail.

  “We’re still friends,” Mr. Charles said. “But I know you can do better.”

  Still friends. The words restored her a little. But she hated that she had to add him to the list of people she’d let down.

  She met Reyna at their usual spot for lunch – a small, round cafe table in the second-floor lounge, far from the cafeteria. If Reyna made other friends during the time Lucy had private tutors, they weren’t close friends, because she seemed to have dumped them all upon Lucy’s return. It was always either only the two of them at their table, or them plus Carson if he was tired of his guy friends. Today they had their privacy.

  “Here’s the latest divorce newsflash,” Reyna said. “One of my dad’s girlfriends or whatever was – wait for it—”

  Lucy slid down in her chair. “I’m scared to know.”

  Reyna’s parents were in the midst of an epically brutal divorce involving adultery and hiding money and people basically at their worst. Also a house in Pacific Heights, a cottage in Stinson Beach, and Reyna’s little sister, Abigail. To add to the awkwardness, Reyna’s dad was Lucy’s orthodontist.

  “You should be scared. Soon-Yi Pak’s mom.”

  “Oh. God.” Soon-Yi was a sophomore and a tennis star, sweet but kind of boring off the court. “How did they meet?”

  “How do you think? Have you seen Soon-Yi’s teeth? Here.” Reyna passed Lucy half the turkey wrap they were sharing.

  “Speaking of teeth,” Lucy said, “I have an appointment with your dad next Saturday. I’ll come over after.” Dr. Bauman’s office was in the lower level of Reyna’s house, which added yet another complication to the divorce.

  “You’re still seeing him?” Reyna made a face and pushed her half of the wrap away.