Heart and Soul by Sally Mandel Read Free Book Online

professor to comment on the ornaments I was experimenting with in the Bach D-minor Concerto. Those are the extra finger turns that early composers like to stick onto some of their notes to doll them up. I think of them as hats, like Easter bonnets. Anyway, Professor Stein gave me one of his hawk looks where his eyes narrow and his nose turns almost purple, but he didn’t say anything more about David. At the end of the lesson, he went to the window and opened it wide so he could smoke his cigar. It always scared me how he perched on the windowsill like that, but his wife had made him do it so he wouldn’t stink up the apartment and now he couldn’t break the habit. Summer street sounds blasted in like the brass section of the New York Philharmonic getting cranked up for Copland’s Third Symphony.
    â€œI have a gig for you,” he said.
    A psychotherapist had tried to teach me to short-circuit my knee-jerk response. Take deep breaths. You can choose not to be terrified. But there it was, the lurch of nausea in the gut, the clammy hands, the dizziness, the sense of impending disaster. I closed my eyes against the explosion of colors but as always, it didn’t help.
    â€œBess?” The Professor climbed out of the window, sat down beside me on the piano bench, and put his arm around me. I didn’t mind the smell of that stogy. In fact, it was kind of comforting. “Bess, it’s a competition in Boston with $25,000 in prize money. You can win it easily.”
    â€œWhile I’m lying under the Steinway?” The fireworks had quit popping off but lunch was working an instant replay in the back of my throat.
    There was a long silence. Then he said, “I think we have to talk about your future.”
    â€œI know,” I said. “We’re wasting our time. I’ve got to quit.”
    Professor Stein sucked on his cigar. Then he got up and leaned against the piano so he could look at me. “Darling, I’ve never seen anyone fight so hard to beat the lampenfieber. ” The Professor called stage fright by its German name, which, loosely translated, meant being butt-petrified of the lights at the edge of the stage. “I know you’re discouraged but I want you to give it one more try. The Ruggiero’s ready and so’s the Hindemith.”
    I avoided looking at him—all that hope in his face made me feel too wretched. “I’ve been checking out the bulletin board for accompanist jobs,” I said. “Maybe I could make enough money.” That kind of thing didn’t freak me out and it would still be a connection.
    Professor Stein jabbed his cigar into an ashtray like he was trying to kill something that was living in there. Then he started pacing back and forth between the piles on the floor. He stopped between Beethoven and Grieg. “That talent of yours, hiding behind some second-rate soprano,” he said. “It turns my stomach.”
    â€œI’d be playing music.”
    He put his hands on my shoulders, his old bent and knobby fingers forcing me to look at him. “Humor an old man,” he said. “Just this one last time.”
    What could I say? He had invested almost ten years into me. I owed him. Besides, twenty-five grand would sure as hell look sweet in Angie’s bank account.
    The morning I was supposed to go to Boston, I got a call from Pauline.
    â€œI’m in a phone booth on 79th and Broadway,” she said. “I have to see you. My God, Bess, I have to.”
    â€œI’m just running to catch a bus to Boston. What’s going on?” Pauline had always been a drama queen. Catastrophe could mean anything from a death in the family to losing her Soap Opera Digest on the bus.
    â€œCan I go with you? Let me just ride up there with you.”
    â€œThat bad.”
    â€œOh, shit.” Now she was starting to cry. “I don’t have any money.”
    â€œDon’t worry about it, Pauls.