When I was eight years old I had a piano made of nine martini glasses.
I could have had a real piano if I had been able to pay the terrible price, been able to put up with piano lessons, but the old German spy who taught piano in the small town of Seymour, Indiana, was jealous of my talent.
“Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” she would scream in her guttural accent, hitting me on the knuckles with the stick she kept for that purpose. “Stopping this crazy business. Can’t you ever listen? Can’t you sit still a minute? Can’t you settle down?”
God knows I tried to settle down. But the mere sight of the magnificent black upright, the feel of the piano stool against my plump bottom, the cold ivory touch of the keys would send me into paroxysms of musical bliss, and I would throw back my head and begin to pound out melodies in two octaves.
“Stop it,” she would be screaming. “This is no music, this crazy banging business. Stop on my piano. Stop before I call your momma!”
I remember the day I quit for good. I got up from the piano stool, slammed the cover down on the keys, told her my father would have her arrested, and stalked out of the house without my hat and gloves. It was a cold November day, and I walked home with gray skies all around me, shivering and brokenhearted, certain the secret lives of musical instruments were closed to me forever.
So music might have disappeared from my life. With my formal training at this sorry end I might have had to content myself with tap and ballet and public speaking, but a muse looked down from heaven and took pity on me.
She arrived in the form of a glamorous war widow, was waiting for me at the bar when I walked into the officers’ club with my parents that Saturday night.
There she sat, wearing black taffeta, smoking long white cigarettes, sipping her third very dry martini.
“Isn’t that Doris Treadway at the bar?” my mother said. “I can’t believe she’s going out in public.”
“What would you like her to do,” my father said, “stay home and go crazy?”
“Well, after all,” my mother whispered. “It’s only been a month.”
“Do you know that lady?” I asked, wondering if she was a movie star. She looked exactly like a movie star.
“She works for your daddy, honey,” my mother said. “Her husband got killed in the Philippines.”
“Go talk to her,” my father said. “Go cheer her up. Go tell her who you are.”
As soon as we ordered dinner I did just that. I walked across the room and took up the stool beside her at the bar. I breathed deeply of her cool perfume, listening to the rustling of her sleeves as she took a long sophisticated drag on her Camel.
“So you are Dudley’s daughter,” she said, smiling at me. I squirmed with delight beneath her approving gaze, enchanted by the dark timbre of her voice, the marvelous fuchsia of her lips and fingertips, the brooding glamor of her widowhood.
“I’m Rhoda,” I said. “The baby-sitter quit so they brought me with them.”
“Would you like a drink?” she asked. “Could I persuade you to join me?”
“Sure,” I said. “Sure I’ll join you.”
She conferred with the bartender and waved to my parents who were watching us from across the room.
“Well, Rhoda,” she said, “I’ve been hearing about you from your father.”
“What did you hear?” I asked, getting worried.
“Well,” she said, “the best thing I heard was that you locked yourself in a bathroom for six hours to keep from eating fruit cocktail.”
“I hate fruit cocktail,” I said. “It makes me sick. I wouldn’t eat fruit cocktail for all the tea in China.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” she said, picking up her stirrer and tapping it on her martini glass. “I think people who hate fruit cocktail should always stick together.”
The stirrer made a lovely sound against the glass. The bartender returned, bringing a wineglass full of bright pink liquid.
“Taste it,” she said, “go ahead. He made it just for you.”
I picked up the glass in two fingers and brought it delicately to my lips as I had seen her do.
“It’s wonderful,” I said, “what’s in it?”
“Something special,” she said. “It’s called a Shirley Temple. So little girls can pretend they’re drinking.” She laughed out loud and began to tap the glass stirrer against the line of empty glasses in front of her.
“Why doesn’t he move the empty glasses?” I asked.
“Because I’m playing them,” she said. “Listen.” She tapped out a little tune. “Now, listen to this,” she said, adding small amounts of water to the glasses. She tapped them again with a stirrer, calling out the notes in a very high, very clear soprano voice. “Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So . . . Bartender,” she called, “bring us more glasses.”
In a minute she had arranged a keyboard with nine perfect notes.
“Here,” she said, moving the glasses in front of me, handing me the stirrer, “you play it.”
“What should I play,” I said. “I don’t know any music.”
“Of course you know music,” she said. “Everyone knows music. Play anything you like. Play whatever comes into your head.”
I began to hit the glasses with the stirrer, gingerly at first, then with more abandon. Soon I had something going that sounded marvelous.
“Is that by any chance the ‘Air Corps Hymn’ you’re playing?” she said.
“Well . . . yes it is,” I said. “How could you tell?”
She began to sing along with me, singing the words in her perfect voice as I beat upon the glasses. “Off we go,” she sang, “into the wild blue yonder, climbing high into the sky, dum, dum, dum. Down we dive spouting a flame from under, off with one hell-of-a-roar, roar, roar . . .”
People crowded around our end of the bar, listening to us, applauding. We finished with the air corps and started right in on the army. “Over hill, over dale, as we hit the dusty trail, and those caissons go marching along, dum, dum, dum . . . In and out, hear them shout, counter march and right about, and those caissons go rolling along. For it’s hie, hie, hee, in the field artilll-a-reeeee . . .”
A man near me began playing the bass on a brandy glass. Another man drummed on the bar with a pair of ashtrays.
Doris broke into “Begin the Beguine.” “When they begin the beguine,” she said, “it brings back a night of tropical splendor. It brings back the sound of music so te-en-de-rr. It brings back a memorreeeeee ever green.”
A woman in a green dress began dancing, swaying to our rhythm. My martini glasses shone in the light from the bar. As I struck them one by one the notes floated around me like bright translucent boats.
This was music! Not the stale order of the book and the metronome, not the stick and the German. Music was this wildness rising from the dark taffeta of Doris’s dress. This praise, this brilliance.
The soft delicious light, the smell of perfume and gin, the perfection of our artistry almost overwhelmed me, but I played bravely on.
Every now and then I would look up and see Doris smiling at me while she sang. Doris and I were one. And that too was the secret of music.
I do not know how long we played. Perhaps we played until my dinner was served. Perhaps we played for hours. Perhaps we are playing still.
“Oh, just let them begin the beguine, let them plaaaaay . . .Let the fire that was once a flame remain an ember. Let it burn like the long lost desire I only remember. When they begin, when they begin, when they begi-i-i-i-i-in the be-gui-i-i-i-ine . . .”