Music From Small Hands - Matthew Wherttam

One winter evening when I was still in elementary school, my mother began talking to me about

piano lessons. She wasn’t telling me I had to take them, but she was saying it would be a good

thing if I did. And she stood while she talked. Her eyes were on me, steady and focused, and my

father was standing beside her. He was silent, his eyes were dull and maybe even a little sad. If,

at that moment, both of them magically shrank way down, they could have been the two

figurines that go on top of a wedding cake. My mother told me I had been watching too much

TV after school. I told her it was too cold to be outside playing baseball, but when spring came

that’s what I would be doing. I had just gotten a new baseball glove.

The discussion did not last long or go well for me.

I don’t remember much about my first piano teacher. I believe she was short, thin and

had light hair of some sort. She was young. Not ugly, but not pretty, either. I can’t recall whether

she was married; but I would bet and even give good odds, she wasn’t, and I’d also bet she didn’t

have a boyfriend, and wasn’t dating. How she dressed and whether she wore lipstick or jewelry, I

can’t say. If she used perfume, she was never close enough for me to smell it. And there’s

nothing I can tell you about her voice except that she never shouted.

She must have made me sit up straight, shown me middle C, taught me how to read notes,

the sharps and the flats, and made me play scales; but, I can’t recall any of that. What I do

remember were the pink Snoball cakes and milk I would get before our lesson began. The pink

marshmallow and coconut flakes stuck to my teeth and tongue.

She would arrive with a metronome. A metronome with a triangular, dark-brown,

wooden base and a dark gray pendulum bar whose tip was bent. That metronome could have

fallen, been dropped or even attacked by one of her other students, but still it worked.

The edge of the piano bench bit into my legs and my teacher would sometimes twitch or

stare out into space while I played. When we were about to finish our lesson, she’d hand me

sheet music for a new piece. Always only one. And always an easy one. I can’t remember her

ever actually handing it to me, and I can’t remember her getting up and walking out our front

door. What I do know is that suddenly I would be alone in our living room wishing it were spring

and that I could play ball or have another pink, marshmallow Snoball cake.

I never practiced much. If it weren’t for my mother I wouldn’t have practiced at all. And

at my next lesson, if I couldn’t play my latest piece (a thing which never happened), my teacher

wouldn’t have cared. Once, when a bird smacked into the front window of our living room, I

jumped but she didn’t seem to notice.

The winter went on and on, so one weekend morning, I bundled up and went outdoors

with my new glove and a hardball. The wind was blowing and the hardball began to feel harder.

None of my friends were out, and the field near our school was covered in snow, and the longer I

stayed out, the closer I came to ruining that hardball and my new glove.

On the day of my next lesson, my mother told me I would be getting a new teacher who

turned out to be a tall, young man with thick black hair; hair that hung down to just above his

chin and then curled back up a bit. And though he was pale, he had a massive, muscular neck,

and broad shoulders. His cheeks bulged out and so did his eyes. He was like a balloon that was

about to pop, and he seemed to be in the middle of an important and distressing thought.

He had me play one of the pieces I had gotten from my first teacher. When I finished, he

told me it was too easy. Then he moved me off the bench and began playing a piece he had

brought. Angry notes flew from his fingers; and he lurched around and grimaced while he

played. Ours was an unassuming, upright piano, but under his hands, it might as well have been a

baby grand. He wore a long, black jacket and black pants and at first I believed that he was

wearing a tuxedo. But why would a piano teacher wear a tuxedo to a lesson? And why weren’t

there tuxedo stripes running down the sides of his pant legs? He wasn’t wearing a cummerbund,

a complicated tie or a frilly tuxedo shirt, and the shirt he had on was open at the top and spilling

out over the front of his black jacket, a jacket which had no tuxedo lapels and no tuxedo tails.

When he was done playing, it was my turn. The sheet music for the piece he had played

was in front of me. But there was no metronome. It was just him, the piano and me. And I began

playing. A metronome might have calmed me down or speeded things up or done something else

to make things bearable.

When our lesson came to a close, he pointed at the sheet of music and told me to

‘prepare’ it for our next lesson. I remember that word prepare.

I practiced like crazy that next week, as if he were my gym teacher— a big bully of a

gym teacher who would not tolerate mistakes. If could play the piece perfectly, maybe he would

crumble into dust and blow away–quickly and completely. But because the piece had tons of

notes and difficult fingering, I ran out of fingers again and again while trying to get through it. I

spent so many hours practicing, that by the end of the week all the notes and fingering had gotten

stuck in my head and I could play it by heart.

At our next lesson I played it. I kept my eyes straight ahead because that seemed to be

the respectful thing to do. I played it without looking at the notes or my fingers. I was in a trance.

I could have been in a crowd and I would have kept on playing unless someone happened to fall

on top of me. When I was done he didn’t seem especially pleased. He told me some things I had

done wrong. And he kept talking and talking, and breathing a lot at the same time like he was a

gear in some machine–a gear that was banging and rattling as it went around. I kept still. I

became numb and then began imagining I might be paralyzed. He was big, and his black jacket

and black pants were looking less and less like a tuxedo and more and more like the uniform you

would wear in a military parade. And I can’t remember saying a single word that entire lesson.

Before he left, he announced:

“You are capable. We don’t have to worry about that. But do more work on the piece you

just played. Work on the fingering. And here are two others I want you to ‘prepare’ for next

week. And try playing with emotion.”

Then he raced out our front door. He ran so fast I was surprised he hadn’t lifted off the

floor and into the air. And now there were three words I had gotten from him: capable, prepare,

and emotion.

That night at dinner I didn’t say much. After finishing my regular homework I looked at

those two new pieces. They had more notes and crazier fingering than the first one.

My mother, my father, my new piano teacher, and apparently the entire rest of the world

did not seem to care about how many hours I had practiced that past week or about all the

baseball I wouldn’t have time for in spring on account of this piano stuff. Those words capable,

prepare and emotion were stuck in my head and I couldn’t get rid of them.

How was I supposed to put emotion into these pieces? Was I supposed to make the notes

sound angry like he did? Or lurch around and move my lips silently like him? He had played

loudly and with lots of shaking. That’s for sure.

Until that winter, I had never even touched our piano. And whenever my mother and

father sat down and played duets, it sounded corny.

This giant, black-jacketed, pale, piano teacher surely had other students who were not

capable. I could have been one of them. But, by practicing so much, I had become capable; and

now I was expected to play three pieces, play them with emotion, and maybe even fly out our

front door when I was done. But was I really thinking those things or am I only making this stuff

up now?

I got undressed and into bed. My mother came into my room, kissed me, said good night,

turned out the lights and left. She seemed happy. Maybe she had heard that I was capable.

Maybe she liked how much time I had spent at the piano that week. I closed my eyes and began

to cry. At least I think I remember beginning to cry.

Why was the fingering on those three pieces so difficult? The composers were smart

enough to think up the music, they should have figured out easier fingering, as well.

I wondered whether my teacher might, at that very moment, be in a tuxedo, in front of a

grand piano and a huge crowd, in an enormous concert hall. Maybe a stadium. But people who

play in front of such crowds were surely far beyond giving lessons to little kids who wanted to be

elsewhere. Or, again, maybe I am just making up all this stuff. I do know the entire world

seemed to be whirling around me as I lay in bed. Gradually things began to slow down. I opened

my eyes. They were now used to the darkness in my bedroom. I could see the dim outlines of

things. The dim outlines of my new baseball glove.