From: jaynelson@newyorkconservatory.com
Subject: Audition Preparations
This message is to confirm your audition time at 1:00 p.m. on October 20 at the New York Conservatory. Please bring instrument, music, and any accompaniment needed, as it will not be provided. We look forward to meeting you and welcoming you to our esteemed campus.
On Tuesday, I skipped lunch for my first music lesson.
Since Sacred Heart didn’t specifically have an orchestra, my parents arranged for a teacher to give me private instruction in violin and piano to help with my audition.
While my violin was my first love, if I was going to be taken seriously as a composer, I had to get better at the piano. I’d been taking lessons for three years, and I was still no Beethoven.
I slipped into the music room and, with my backpack still in my lap like a shield, I took a seat at a piano old enough to have been carried over on the ark. The room was small, quiet.
A sanctuary.
It was always this way for me. The stored instruments in the closets called out like old friends. The bent and scratched black music stands welcomed me into their home. The oily smell, a perfume. It was like . . . church.
I ran my fingers over the keys in a concert B-flat scale and let my thoughts wander. Last night had been weird. I helped Beckett with his lines until 3:00 a.m., when neither of us could talk for yawning. As he got into his scenes, the arrogance and antagonism disappeared. In its place was a guy who was a perfectionist about his craft. Who relentlessly attacked the same few pages repeatedly until I had the entire thing memorized too. He was serious, subdued. Much like me and my violin.
And for a few hours, I almost liked him.
I returned my attention to the front of the room and stopped playing when I spotted a picture of Christ hanging on the wall. The silence filled my ears, and I found myself . . . waiting.
Not really sure for what. A connection. A sign. A voice from the rafters to tell me how to get my life back?
“I’ve been telling Principal Plummer we need to redecorate in here.”
I startled at the voice behind me. “Oh, hello.”
An older woman walked into the room, smiling with two rows of oversized teeth. “Sister Maria. Resident musician, I am.” She looked around the room, and I followed the path of her stare. Wooden floors. Wooden paneling. Pendant lights that hung from chains that were probably once brass, but now were more a shade of dusty.
“Except for two hours a day, it’s a nice place for peace and quiet,”
Sister Maria said. “But it’s a bit drab and dark for my taste. I keep hoping Mr. Plummer will bring it into this current decade, but so far we seem pretty partial to the 1970s.” She shook her head and muttered, “Sacrilegious harvest gold.”
“So you teach here?”
“Part-time. Principles of faith.” She looked toward the cross.
“It’s an elective.”
“Sounds like a good class,” I said for the sake of small talk.
“Maybe you can get into it next semester.”
With the way my faith was going, I’d probably flunk it. “And you give lessons?”
“Right. We’re supposed to make your audition piece perfect for some fancy school and get you up to speed on the piano. Do I have it right, so?” She laughed for no reason, a full-bodied sound. The sort of chuckle that turned heads and made people smile.
“Yes.” Perfection was exactly what I wanted in Will’s song. “I have most of the composition done, except for the ending.”
“Where do you come from again?”
“America. South Carolina.”
“Ah, lovely place.”
“It can be.”
“But it wasn’t when you left?” She dropped herself onto the piano bench beside me.
“It’s complicated.”
“You’re a teenager. It’s all complicated.”
“It’s just . . .” I hugged my backpack to me. “This isn’t what I expected.”
“What—life? Abbeyglen?” Smiling, she angled her head and regarded me with blue eyes that reminded me of my mother’s. I’d spent the last two years turning away from all sorts of varieties of pity and understanding. But I didn’t look away from Sister Maria.
“I really don’t know.” I shook my head. “It’s nothing. I shouldn’t be rambling on like this.”
“I’m giving you some homework.”
I mentally poked holes in all those warm, fuzzy grandma feelings.
“Get out and see the town. Get to know the land, the people.”
Her eyes sparkled with joy. “It’s a beautiful place. Full of life.
Everywhere I look, I see God.”
“Sounds like my brother. He came here his senior year and fell in love with the place.”
“Then you need to discover the Ireland he saw.”
“I’m trying. The people I’m staying with run a B and B. They barely have time to sleep.”
“God will open that door for you.” Sister Maria put her wrinkled hand on mine. “There’s nothing you’re searching for that can’t be found in Ireland—God, good music, beautiful landscapes, wonderful food, maybe even parts of yourself. You just have to be brave enough to look.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
She laughed again. “You know what comes after homework, right?”
“Normally a quiz. But I have you pegged for someone who’s nicer than that.”
“Wrong. Next time we meet there will be a quiz.”
“Can’t wait.”
“So don’t be thinking you’ll get out of here without playing your piece.” She clapped her hands. “Get to it now.”
Without needing to take the sheet music out of my bag, I set my fingers on the keys and dove into Will’s song. My execution was flawless, my timing a dream. For a full two minutes, every note just right.
And then I stopped.
“That’s all I have.”
I expected her to brag, to compliment my advanced skills, my creative vision.
“Your ending needs work.”
“I don’t have one.”
“A requirement for every song, I’m told.”
“I’m working on it.” I told her about the journal, finally extracting it from my bag. “Have you seen this cross?”
“Sure.”
“You have?”
Sister Maria squinted as she pressed her nose closer. “A few thousand of them. They’re all over Ireland.”
“But I have to find this one.”
I waited for her to laugh, to tell me I was being foolish. But she just studied me for a moment before pursing her lips. “So that’s where your ending is?” She tapped the picture.
“Yes.”
“Then you must find it. But in the meantime, you continue to practice.” She gave my hand a squeeze, her skin warm against my own. “No one bothered to tell me your name.”
“Finley Sinclair.”
“A beautiful name.” She smiled. “Do you know what it means?”
I glanced at my watch. “Girl who’s going to be late to class?”
“Warrior.” Sister Maria stood, her form short and slightly stooped. Her uniform just like the other teachers’. “It means fair warrior.” Her palm rested on my head, like she was bestowing a blessing. “And Finley Sinclair, I have a feeling that’s just what you are.”
The sun shined. The birds sang. The trees swayed. It was a fine afternoon to adopt a sweet, elderly grandma.
I walked the half mile from school to the Rosemore nursing home. After presenting my paperwork to the head nurse, I followed her directions to hall C. The building smelled of cleaning solution and other things I didn’t really care to think about. I passed by a yellow-haired woman with a walker who smiled at me and waved.
“Hello!” she said. “Hello!”
I waved back and kept walking. Old people were so nice.
I knocked on door 12 and went on in.
There in a wheelchair sat Cathleen Sweeney. White hair porcupined on her head. Pink pajama pants longer than her spindly legs.
Fluffy blue slippers. Sleepy gaze.
Oh, she looked like the sweetest thing.
“Hello, Mrs. Sweeney. I’m—”
“Get outta my room!”
I took a step back as the woman roused like a waking dragon.
“But I’m Finley Sinclair and—”
“I don’t care if you’re the Blessed Virgin herself, get out.”
My heart tripled in time. “I’m from the school. You were assigned to me and—”
She peered over her bifocals, and I swore her eyes were mean enough to shoot lightning. “You have five seconds to remove yourself. I don’t want any schoolgirl reading me stories or interrupting my day. Go do your work somewhere else, why don’t you now?”
Out of fear, shock, or complete brain freeze, I stayed rooted to the spot, my feet locked to the floor.
“Nurse!” Mrs. Sweeney yelled. “Nurse!”
Oh, shoot. Oh no.
“Nurse!”
“Okay! I’m leaving!” I held up my hands as if Mrs. Sweeney had a pistol pointed at me instead of her bony finger.
“What is going on here?” The director of nursing stepped into the doorway, her scrub-clad body filling up the space. “Cathleen, stop that yelling.”
“Then get her out.”
“This young woman is from Sacred Heart. Haven’t we been talking about this for weeks? Remember our conversation?”
“The one about me eating more prunes?”
The nurse took a deep breath and slowly released it. “The one about being nice and not scaring children.”
“It’s okay,” I said, pulse galloping. “She didn’t scare me.” Much.
“Well, I meant to.” Cathleen rested her hands on her wheels and glared. “I told you, Belinda, I don’t want any company. I didn’t last year, or the year before, and I don’t today.”
“Too bad.” The nurse walked over to Cathleen, leaned down until they were eye to eye. “She stays. You’ll not be chasing this one off.”
This was not how I’d pictured this experience. I was so not going to bring her any of Mr. O’Callaghan’s cookies. Not even the burned ones. How did someone get to be this mean?
“I think I should go.” I tugged up the strap of my backpack. “I’ll . . .” Mrs. Sweeney watched me as I backed out the door. “I’ll just see if I can be reassigned. Shouldn’t be a problem.” I bid them both good-bye and all but ran out the door.
“Wait!”
I was halfway down the hall when the nurse caught up.
“I’m sorry for Cathleen.” She panted with every word, winded after her little jog. “She can be . . . difficult.”
Two-year-olds were difficult. That woman was a terrorist. “Really, it’s not a problem. I’ll just get a new assignment.”
The nurse’s brown skin wrinkled as she frowned. “I wish you’d give it another try. I know Cathleen is a bit harsh, but she needs someone right now.” She dropped her voice and locked her eyes with mine. “Cathleen has cancer. She has a couple months left—at the most.”
“She’s dying?” They’d set me up with a dying grandma?
No way.
There was no stinkin’ way.
“Um . . . I better get back home. Lots of homework to do.”
“Please consider it. Cathleen needs you.”
“No, ma’am. Pretty sure she doesn’t.” I shook my head, unwilling to explain, desperate to leave. “Good-bye.” I mumbled another apology and raced out.
In the lobby, the yellow-haired woman with the walker smiled and waved again.
“Come back soon!”