The Music Teacher Part 10

"You're just jealous," he tells me.

"Oh, really? What am I jealous of? Her hair? I know how to dye my hair red. I know how to wear a tank top. I know how to sing the way she sings. It's a trick. She's a trick. She's a siren, Franklin. She's leading you out onto the rocks. You can go there if you want to."

He squints his eyes at me. "And where are you leading me?"

"To the truth," I say.

"Your truth," he says, sitting up straighter in his chair.

"There is nothing relative about truth," I say.

"Okay, then," he counters. "Where's your manager?"

"I don't have one."

"Exactly."

"I'm just good at what I do."

"And Jenny isn't?"

"No, she's excellent at what she does. She steals talent."

Franklin looks at me for a long time. Confident that nothing unwanted is on his chin, he sits back in his chair and takes long, slow sips of his cheap red wine.

"You hate women, don't you?" he finally asks.

"I'm not sure. I don't think I know any."

"Why?"

"Because there aren't any women in Los Angeles. There are only little girls."

"What makes you say that?"

"Women have b.r.e.a.s.t.s and hips. Have you met anyone like that in L.A.?"

Smirking, he says, "I've met plenty of women with b.r.e.a.s.t.s."

"I mean real ones. You know how to tell the difference? Your b.r.e.a.s.t.s lie down when you do."

Franklin, who is smart, mulls this over, then says, "Do you know any men in Los Angeles?"

"There aren't many," I admit. "They're mostly girls in disguise."

"What am I, then?"

I think about that for a moment before I decide to answer honestly.

"You're a confused man."

"Oh, really?" he says, leaning away from me. "And what am I confused about?"

"Whether or not you are a man."

"And what's your definition of a man?"

I think about that for a moment. "Men fight," I say.

"Oh, you want me to join the army?"

"I don't want you to do anything. But that is my definition of men. They are willing to fight."

"What is it you want me to fight?" he asks.

"Jenny," I say.

We don't speak again until the check comes. When it does, we decide to divide it.

He's not a man, I realize to my dismay.

Men pay.

WE ARE STANDING in front of the restaurant, waiting for the parking valets to bring our car around, when I catch a glimpse of her. It's not a mistake. I'd know her anywhere. Our eyes connect, on this crowded street. She is in her late teens now. Either she's pursuing her path to greatness or she has given up. Her clothes tell me she's chosen the latter. She's dirty and distracted. She's not carrying a violin.

Franklin is yammering about how he could have played the last solo better. It was good, but it could have been better. I feel trapped by his narcissism, and I'm not listening anymore because I have seen her and I want to follow her. She is walking away from me, walking alone, moving rather blindly down the empty sidewalk.

I say, "Hallie!"

The body freezes, then, without looking back, starts to move faster.

"Hallie, is that you?" I call out.

She walks even faster.

Then I abandon Franklin and start to run down the sidewalk. I am gaining on her when she spins around and looks at me. It's her and it isn't her. Her hair is red now. Her skin is the same amount of pale. Her eyes connect with mine, and they say, Don't come any closer.

"It's me," I say. "Your music teacher."

This person, who looks so much like Hallie but might not be, says, "I don't have a music teacher."

Our eyes connect.

She says, "Look, just leave me alone."

I move closer to her. It's as if she's a ghost and I'm afraid she'll go back to some other dimension.

I say, "Hallie, I know I screwed everything up. I didn't want to hurt you. I just wanted to save you."

"Save me?" Her expression is one of genuine bewilderment. "Who are you, thinking you can save people?"

I have no answer to that. "Just stay. Stay and talk to me."

"You are scary," she says to me.

"No, I'm really not."

Then she disappears around the corner.

I watch her walk away, and I'm not sure. I thought it was her- I would have bet my life on it-but as I see her disappearing into the shadows, I start to doubt. I don't know anymore. I don't know anything.

She moves into darkness, and I stand there. Finally I move back to where Franklin is waiting.

He says, "What was that all about?"

"I thought I knew her."

He rolls his eyes, then looks up to heaven, as if he's seen the light.

He says, "Jesus, Pearl, if you're gay, just say so."

"I'm not gay. I thought I knew her."

He just looks at me.

"I thought it was Hallie," I tell him.

He sighs. "Your student? That Hallie?"

"Yes."

"That was months ago. Aren't you over that?"

No, I am not over that. I will never be over that.

But I don't trust him enough to say it.

"Tell me what went on there. A student left you? Is that the big deal?"

"No, it was more."

"What?"

I can't look at him.

His car arrives, he tips the valet, and as he's climbing in, he calls out to me, "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friends.h.i.+p."

"Maybe," I respond, watching him get in the car and drive off.

I don't say, First you have to believe in those things.

IT WASN'T JUST that she was good. I won't bore you with the details of how good she was. Musicians can be so tedious about details. And the truth is, it's never about details or technicalities. It's always about feel. When a musician is truly gifted, it is because she has tapped into something entirely beyond definition. She hears the music. She captures it. She processes her own emotions through it. She explains it, without defining it. Sometimes I wish G.o.d would give me the words to describe it; other times, I'm grateful that he doesn't. She was good, all right? She was blessed.

And sometimes I think that what happened to her had everything to do with my own pride, my own expectations. I had already started to brag about her. I couldn't resist telling Franklin and Ernest (the two most arrogant musicians) that I had struck gold with this student, that I had found the person who would put all of us on the map. I pictured us going to see her at the philharmonic, taking up an entire reserved row. I pictured her announcing to the audience that we were there, giving us credit for her accomplishment. Truth be told, I pictured her singling me out and asking me to take a bow.

But that was just an indulgence on my part. Mainly I focused on teaching her, drawing those sounds from her, luxuriating in the perfection of her playing.

So you can imagine how I felt when, seven or eight months in, she told me she was quitting.

I told her she couldn't.

She said, "We're out of money. We can't pay anymore."

"What about the state grant?"

"It ran out."

"I don't believe you," I told her. "Dorothy hasn't said anything."

"Earl knows," she said. "He told me last night. The money has stopped coming in."

I sighed, resting in my metal chair, taking a moment to stare at her and devise a plan. I didn't know Earl at all, but I pictured him as this big, mean, opposing man who commanded the obedience of all the women in his life. I saw Dorothy cowering in his presence, letting the gleam in her eye leak out and drift down the drain. They had boys who were into sports. Earl was probably the commander. He understood men competing with one another and nothing else. He was eager to give up on her.

"Then you have to find the money somewhere else," I told her.

"Where?" she asked.

"There are all kinds of ways. You can't just give up. You're truly gifted."

She shrugged, putting her instrument away long before we were finished.

"He doesn't want me playing anymore," she told me.

Earl. The cold-eyed commander.

I sat forward in my seat and reached out for her hand. She allowed me to take it. There were no marks on her wrist. It was as if I had dreamed it. Now I was only trying to reach my best student, trying to persuade her to realize my dreams along with hers.

I knew, even as I did it, that this was a shortcoming of my profession. Wanting to achieve through your students is the strongest drug any teacher can ever confront. I wanted to be above that, but I wasn't.

I said, "Hallie, listen to me. I know you've had a hard life, but music is the way out. You can't just abandon it. It's showing you how to live."

She looked down at her scuffed Doc Martens. "I don't care about how to live."

I squeezed her hand, but her expression did not change. She stared at the ground as if she expected nothing from it, which was why she longed for it.

"You don't know how hard it is," she finally said.

"I think I know a little about it," I told her. And then I told her the whole story of my own abandoned violin, melting among the leaves, and how I finally made it to college and found the music again. I had always thought my story was pretty impressive, but Hallie did not seem swayed by it. Eventually she looked up at me.