I bounced the ball against the yellow wall in the front of my house, waiting for the piano teacher. I’d been taking lessons for six weeks and I liked the piano, my mother played well, standards and show tunes, and sang. Often I sang along with her or by myself as she played. “Young at Heart” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” were two of my favorites. I loved the dark blue cover of the sheet music of “Bewitched,” with the drawing of the woman in a flowing white gown in the lower left-hand corner. It made me think of New York, though I’d never been there. White on midnight dark.
I liked to stand next to the piano bench while my mother played and listen to “Satan Takes a Holiday,” a fox-trot it said on the sheet music. I was eight years old and could easily imagine foxes trotting in evening gowns.
I was up to “The Scissors-Grinder” and “Swan on the Lake” in the second red Thompson book. That was pretty good for six weeks, but I had begun to stutter. I knew I had begun to stutter because I’d heard my mother say it to my father on the phone. They ought just to ignore it, she’d said, and it would stop.
“Ready for your lesson today?” asked the teacher as she came up the walk.
“I’ll be in in a minute,” I said, continuing to bounce the ball off the yellow bricks. The teacher smiled and went into the building.
I kept hitting the ball against the wall. I knew she would be talking to my mother, then arranging the lesson books on the rack above the piano. I hit the ball once high above the first-floor windows, caught it, and ran.