Part 11 (1/2)

”There comes a point,” she said, ”where it's no longer worth it.”

There was something mature in her tone of voice, but I chose to ignore it.

Still stuck in teacher mode, I said, ”Don't you dare say that. Music is always worth it. It's worth everything and anything. I'll talk to Dorothy. I'll make it work.”

She shook her head vigorously. ”No, don't do that.”

”You don't understand,” I said, allowing some of my own desperation to creep through. ”When you are good, when you have real talent, you also have a moral obligation to develop it, to see where it intends to take you.”

She lifted her eyes to me, at the same time withdrawing her hand from mine. She chewed on a hangnail, her eyes trained on my face.

”I have a moral obligation?” she asked.

”Yes.”

”Like G.o.d? He's going to punish me if I stop?”

Had I not been so desperate in that moment, I would have told the truth. I would have said, Oh, Hallie, who the h.e.l.l knows about G.o.d or his intentions? I only know that I would do almost anything to possess your talent, so I'm willing to do almost anything to make sure that, at least in you, it is realized. That is a teacher's obligation, is it not? A teacher shows her student how to do what she herself is not capable of, not courageous enough to pursue.

Instead, because I was on a roll, I said, ”It's not the kind of punishment you're thinking of. If you give up, your punishment will be to walk around in this world, a true musician without an instrument. A player without a place to play.”

She stared at the ground, maybe at her feet, maybe at something I could not see.

”You don't want to give up, do you?” I asked.

She shrugged. ”It's part of my father, part of my mother. It's the only thing I love.”

”Well, there you go,” I said, feeling a tenuous victory.

She sighed a long sigh and lifted the instrument to her chin. She raised the bow shoulder-high and looked at me again.

”So anything is worth it?” she asked.

”Anything,” I told her.

As if I knew. As if I had a f.u.c.king clue.

The money, somehow, did not give out. She kept coming in for lessons. Dorothy kept writing checks. The world kept turning; it didn't end. And Hallie kept making beautiful sounds.

I held on to my dreams, and to hers, locking them both away in a safe place. A place of isolation, devoid of conscience, devoid of regret. I pondered it in my heart.

ALL CRIMINALS HAVE a deep need to confess.

My father, the carpenter, confessed to me by taking me to see fires being put out.

He loved fire the way I love music, and he could not keep it to himself. He told me how fires started. He told me how they were extinguished.

All criminals confess to their crimes through their obsessions. s.e.x addicts pretend to be celibate. Thieves pretend to admire cops. Arsonists pretend to wors.h.i.+p firefighters.

There was a tradition in my house, in my lonely house in Virginia, with my two angry parents, who mostly hated life and refused to partic.i.p.ate in it until the fire alarm went off. Then my father would wake me up, regardless of the hour, and load me into the car, and we would chase the fire.

My father loved wood, and he equally and curiously loved the thing that could destroy it.

It was up to him which ent.i.ty he preferred over the other. Creation or destruction is always the choice. He worried over both. I sat still and waited to learn.

I think, in some part of my brain, that I committed to birth rather than death. Which didn't make me weak. It just made me, as I see it, a woman.

Much later, when he saw me falling in love with an instrument, he wanted to say, Yes, I've known a love like that, quite apart from what you feel for another person. The love you feel for a force, for the evidence of G.o.d on earth. He loved fire, but he had no real place to wors.h.i.+p it. He loved fire too much to kill it. Much as I ultimately loved music too much to kill it.

We are, of course, destroyed by what we love.

9.

WHO WAS THE GREATEST lyricist who ever lived?

Patrick says, ”Paul Simon.”

Ernest says, ”Steve Earle.”

Clive says, ”Bruce Springsteen. No, John Lennon. No, Elvis Costello. No, Bruce.”

I say, ”Woody Guthrie.”

Franklin says, ”Who the h.e.l.l cares about lyrics?”

It is a Wednesday night. We are closing up shop, and we're all somewhat behind, since the holidays are closing in and the store has been very busy. I am cranky, mainly because it is December and I have no one to celebrate with, but also because, generally speaking, I need to get laid, and not getting laid really does make a woman cranky.

Music almost does the trick, but eventually it doesn't. Eventually the keeper of the music realizes that it isn't quite the same as s.e.x, and then the keeper of the music gets a little agitated, knowing that s.e.x would actually help her sleep. But she doesn't know where to get it. No, that's not entirely true. She could get it from the twenty-eight-year-old ba.s.s player, but she doesn't want to do that. She wants to get it from the store manager, the only real man in evidence, but he's so obsessed with music, which he thinks is better than getting laid, that he can't imagine the real thing anymore.

The bottom line is this: life is about people interacting with one another. When people resist doing that, they go a little crazy. They start demanding more than can reasonably be expected from things like musical instruments or pets or houseplants or hobbies. Or students.

The fact that none of us, the lost souls at McCoy's, have any real receptacle for our physical pa.s.sions explains why we hang around talking about who was the greatest lyricist. It's fine to talk about those things. It's really not fine to pretend that it matters in any kind of picture, let alone the big one.

It is because of this essential spiritual deficiency that I became overly involved with Hallie. It is fair to say that her talent attracted me. It is fair to say that I wanted her to realize her potential and that I, as her teacher, felt obligated to do my best to make that happen. It is fine and admirable to want to do your job well. When you want your job to define you, fill up all your holes, make up for what is missing, justify your existence, and serve as a stand-in for your own lost ambitions . . . well, this is when you get into trouble.

That is what happened when I made the decision to visit Hallie's home.

About a month after I saw the bruising on her wrists, a few weeks after she'd told me the money had run out, I noticed that she showed up at our lessons looking depressed and withdrawn. She practiced her scales without complaining. From a technical standpoint, she played all her exercises with perfect precision. But her heart was not in it. The music itself, which is connected to something much deeper than finger and wrist movements, had gone away. It was dying, if not dead. When you see that happen, you know that the student has reached the end of her journey. In most cases, you simply let the lack of interest run its course. The student starts showing up late, starts complaining, stops practicing, stops caring. I had always accepted that with my students. Maybe I would have a couple of concerned discussions with the frustrated parents, but I didn't have much to offer once the interest started bleeding out of the student. It was an exercise, telling everyone to stay the course. I really knew that the course was over, and I simply waited for it to become apparent to all concerned.

I refused to do that with Hallie. When I saw her going through the motions, I decided to do a thing that I never did. I called Dorothy and asked if I could come out for a visit. She didn't resist me. She was eager for it. It was clear to me that Hallie's proficiency in violin was the only thing that kept her interested in this sullen child.

The home was in a pleasant little pocket of Mar Vista, which literally means ”view of the sea.” The sea was close enough to be a rumor in that part of town, but the community was tucked away behind the airport, closer to large warehouse stores and fast-food chains and enormous prefabricated apartment buildings. The ugliness of the landscape had earned this part of town the nickname Marred Vista. I kind of respected that.

It was an ordinary weekday evening when I showed up at their house in my exhausted Honda. My backseat was full of sheet music and accoutrements for my violin, but I left the car unlocked, knowing that no one is in the business of stealing actual music. They only steal radios and CDs. They steal technology. I learned this when my car was broken into in front of my house. I had gotten lazy and left my violin in the backseat. The thieves left it and took, instead, forty dollars' worth of CDs. I suppose it's the good news that no one knows where music really comes from or how much it is really worth.

Dorothy let me into the house, which was small but clean and well kept in the way that poor people's houses are. Everything was cheap, but it gleamed. Just like the house I grew up in. I can remember my mother saying, ”We don't have much, but you can eat off it.” She thought that only rich people had the luxury of being dirty. She might have remembered that from when her family had money. The Millners' house had been messier than ours, but the mess seemed grand somehow. Books scattered, clothes left on the floor, jewelry tossed on countertops. As if there were more where that came from. In a certain kind of poor people's house, everything always matches. Those are the poor people with aspirations. Trying to step up and blend in with the cla.s.s hovering just above them. Matching sets of furniture, and rugs that match the upholstery, and gewgaws and color schemes that tie everything together. As if symmetry begets beauty.