21

My drawings weren’t especially good. I realized that, turning the pages of my sketchbooks early the next morning. I hadn’t been sleeping, and the sight of all my scribbles was sickening, as sickening as the smell of decay I seemed to wear like an aura whenever I was in the bedroom.

Empty paper shows promise. It can be anything. And the pencil makes a few turns, a pirouette, and it can still be anything—almost. But as the pencil scratches the silence, and the paper, and turns it into definite failure, the paper becomes trash. Another botch.

Lani asked how my trip had gone, and I told her that the beach was beautiful. I knew she would understand that.

“You should come with me to meet Mr. Farrar today,” she said.

I turned away. “I don’t want to bother him.”

“He won’t mind at all. He’s a gentleman.” I resented this “gentleman” for making such a good impression on her.

We walked up Lake Boulevard after school. Lani reassured me that my drawings showed promise. “Believe me—you’d be very foolish not to make it your profession.”

“Probably a million people my age can draw.”

“It’s not simply that you can draw. You see things in an original way. I don’t think there are a million original people your age. And anyway, there’s only one of you.”

“You have this view of the world that’s wonderful, Lani, but I don’t think it has anything to do with reality. I admire the way you think, I even love it.” “Love” is such a potent word I stopped myself for a moment. “But things just seem like so much junk to me. Including my drawings.”

She looked at me with cheerful disdain. “You don’t have much faith in yourself, do you?”

“Faith has nothing to do with it.”

“Faith has almost everything to do with it. Here we are.”

It was a stucco duplex with a lawn baked yellow. A green hose snaked among weeds. A screen door had been clawed by a cat, and sagged, starred with tiny, irregular holes.

“I should have worn something different,” I said, brushing at my Levi’s.

“Like what. A toga?” She pressed the doorbell.

The door opened, and I could see the ghost of a person, a pale shadow, someone nearly not there. “Lani, come in. And a friend of yours. How do you do?”

A very old voice, and a very old hand. I shook it, and we were inside the darkness. The room smelled of wax, of lemon and old books. Musty, but good must, leather and furniture polish.

Lani had introduced me, but I was hardly listening as my eyes adjusted to the book-lined shelves, and a dark, glistening cavern—the piano. It was so big it filled the room, the living room so overpowered by the piano that chairs were pressed against the wall.

“Mr. Farrar played a carillon for the Queen’s Coronation,” said Lani. “It was a great honor.”

“Yes, but very much ancient history. Not quite the thing to interest this young man, or me either, if I really had to admit it.” He was a white-haired man, stooped, with a slight tremor in his hands. He wore a suit that was out of fashion, double-breasted, and with a dark blue tie I guessed was silk. The tie was also unfashionable, and yet the man looked wonderful. I couldn’t think of what to say. I felt all knees and knuckles, and found a chair as close to the corner as I could go.

Lani played masterfully. Several times Mr. Farrar tapped the piano with the baton. The baton was glossy, like a long, thin, highly polished bone. It made a dry, insistent note on the piano, a pithy non-music that stopped Lani instantly each time. She would play what she had played all over again. “Excellent!” he would say. “Very good!”

At last he let the baton fall, and made a tent of his fingers. “Now we have to decide what you’ll play for the recital.”

“I still haven’t decided about the recital.”

Mr. Farrar chuckled and looked up at the ceiling. “You mean, you haven’t decided what to play?”

“I haven’t decided that I can do it—at all.”

“After all I’ve said? After hours of flattery that would melt a bronze statue? You see,” said Mr. Farrar, turning to me, “this self-assured young woman suffers from stage fright. So none of us are perfect.”

“But, Lani,” I said, “this is impossible. You’re the least nervous person I know.”

“I don’t feel ready.” This was a Lani I had not seen before. She did not want to meet my eyes, and busied herself with the surface of the piano, running her finger along it, rubbing out an invisible smudge. “I don’t want to overextend myself.”

“I have no better student,” said Mr. Farrar gently. “For years, I’ve tried to encourage a recital. But Lani refuses. What sort of career can a person have as a pianist if that person cannot master her stage fright?”

“You need,” I offered, feeling bold, “more faith in yourself.”

Lani looked at me and exhaled slowly. “It’s a great fear of mine. It always has been. I can’t stand performing before a group of people of any size whatsoever. Ten people would terrify me. Three hundred people—I can’t do it.”

“But you have to try,” I said. “It’s like jumping off a high dive. You have to jump, and the rest is easy.” Actually, I would be terrified, too. But I was surprised to see this calm, strong person suddenly so frail.

Mr. Farrar gazed up at the ceiling again, as though seeing Lani there, performing beautifully before a stadium packed with fans. “This is your special problem, Lani. But remember this. Whether you perform or not, you are still a magnificent pianist, and you’ll become even better, with time.”

He slipped into another room, and reappeared, leading a tall, thin woman with white hair. It was Lillian, his wife, and he introduced me as though I were someone he was pleased to have in his living room. She took my hand with an iron grip, and studied a place somewhere on my forehead. Her eyes searched, back and forth, like someone reading.

“I hate to interrupt a lesson,” she said. “You’re sure you’re entirely finished?”

Mr. Farrar helped her to a chair. She groped, and sat carefully. “We’re trying to convince Lani to have a recital,” he said. “Not having good results, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, but you must talk her into it, Peter,” said Mrs. Farrar, turning in my direction. “She plays so beautifully. When she simply strikes a key, I know, wherever I am in the house, that Lani’s here. Of course, artists have an emotional life that cannot always be argued with.”

I muttered something about trying to convince her, impressed, as I spoke, with the woman’s flowing, moon-bright hair, and the way she fumbled for Mr. Farrar and found him, and held his hand. I felt as coarse as a piece of toast.