The Rehearsal

if she is being forced to reveal that she can’t read or that she is still afraid of the dark. The older girl seems impossibly mature to Isolde, like Victoria’s friends always seem impossibly mature, powdered and scented and full of secrets and private laughter, contemptuous of little Issie for all that she does not yet know. “Thanks,” is what Isolde says to Julia now, smiling quickly and ducking her head. “That would be great. I was going to have to taxi.”

“I won’t tell your mother,” the saxophone teacher says to Isolde, returning at last from her memory. “I know you’re going to keep the taxi fare she’s given you.”

“How do you know I don’t charge a taxi fare?” Julia says.

The saxophone teacher laughs. “I’ve seen your car, for starters,” she says. She starts chatting about the music, speaking mostly to Julia. Her big hands are spread open as she talks, turning her impression of the concert over and over like a potter at a wheel.

Isolde nods and smiles. She darts a look at Julia, and wonders if Julia had been preparing the offer for some time, sitting silent in the gray dusk of the stage-glow and all the while preparing how best to phrase the question. Do you want a lift home? I’ve got my car here. It’d be no problem.

“It’s not a popular configuration,” the saxophone teacher is saying. Isolde keeps nodding wisely, trying to mask the shrinking sensation in her pelvis, which registers as part exhilaration and part dread. What did the offer mean? Isolde almost imagines the older girl leaning in across the gear shift and the handbrake and reaching out an ink-stained jeweled hand to tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear. She almost imagines it, but in a fleeting shock of panic she snuffs out the thought.

“Pretty inspiring stuff,” the saxophone teacher says in conclusion, slapping the armrests in a jolly way and standing up to join the inching exodus. “Pretty inspiring stuff.”

Saturday

“Cheers for the concert,” Julia says to the saxophone teacher after they have shuffled their way out of the auditorium and through the marble foyer into the cold. “It was incredible. I’ll be thinking about it all week.”

The saxophone teacher draws the belt of her leather jacket tighter around her waist. “I’ll see you Monday, then,” she says to Julia. “And I’ll see you on Friday,” she says to Isolde. She looks lonely all of a sudden, standing stiffly on the gritty Town Hall steps with the crowd pouring out on either side of her. She is backlit by the reddish velvet light of the foyer behind her, and it strikes Isolde that she is rather pretty. She registers with something a little like triumph that the saxophone teacher is now the outsider, looking down at the girls with a halting expression as if she wants to detain them further but she is uncertain how.

“Sounds good,” Isolde says, and gives a little wave. Julia smiles, and then the two of them turn away from her and walk out into the night.

Sunday

Mrs. De Gregorio clutches her purse in the crook of her lap while she sips her tea. She sits with her knees together and her thighs elevated a little because she is resting her heels against the crossbar of the chair and only her square toes touch the ground. Her breasts almost reach her lap, and as she sits down she wedges her purse into the gap where her body hinges. The saxophone teacher thinks how very strange it looks, Mrs. De Gregorio curving herself around her purse in this protective way. From where the sax teacher is sitting, she can see only the twin-balled golden clasp peeking out from beneath the soft acrylic bulge of Mrs. De Gregorio’s breast.

She smiles. “What can I do for you, Mrs. De Gregorio?”

“I’ve come about my daughter,” Mrs. De Gregorio says, and as always the saxophone teacher marvels privately at this woman’s performance, this single unitary woman who plays all the mothers so differently, each performance a tender and unique object like the veined clouding on a subtle pearl. “This might seem like a bit of an odd errand,” the woman says, “me marching in here like this to ask you such a personal question, but lately at home we’ve noticed a few changes, and—” Mrs. De Gregorio looks down into her lap and sighs. “She’s just become impossible,” she says at last.

“Let’s start at the beginning, then,” the saxophone teacher says briskly, tugging down her shirttails and smoothing flat the wool of her jersey as if she means business. “First of all—why the saxophone? Why did you choose this particular instrument? The saxophone has connotations, as you know. A saxophone is not a piano or a flute. A very particular type of girl gravitates toward the saxophone, and quite frankly it’s the type of girl who is not very likely to keep the peace. Why did you choose the sax for your daughter?”

“Oh, it was her choice,” Mrs. De Gregorio says, but the saxophone teacher shakes her head and swiftly interrupts her—

“Let’s not play that game, Mrs. De Gregorio. Your daughter is your project, we both know that. The elements beyond your control are really very few indeed. I can see you’re the type of mother who likes to hold the reins. The type of mother who regards her children as free agents is a slapdash mother, a vague uncaring mother who simply doesn’t appreciate a job well done. You are not that person.”

Mrs. De Gregorio nods, a little defeated.

“So you chose this fate for your daughter,” the saxophone teacher continues. “You pushed her toward the instrument of her undoing. You could have had a daughter who played the violin, long-haired and eccentric and quietly confident, but you chose the saxophone. You made that choice.”

“I wanted to say,” Mrs. De Gregorio says, fumbling for the words, “I wanted to say that we’ve noticed a definite change, that’s all. She won’t talk—well. You know what it can be like. And I just wanted to ask what she says to you each week. Whether you might have any clues. A boyfriend or something. Something we could work through, and understand.”

“Why do you think that your daughter would tell me the truth?” the saxophone teacher asks.

“About her studies,” says Mrs. De Gregorio weakly. “Or her life at school. Something like a boyfriend, a problem that we could work through, and understand.”

The saxophone teacher doesn’t speak for a moment, just so Mrs. De Gregorio feels uncomfortable and wishes she hadn’t spoken so freely. Then she says, “But how can you ever know?” She is more brooding now and less abrupt. “How can you ever get to the kernel of truth behind it all? You could watch her. But you have to remember that there are two kinds of watching: either she will know she is being watched, or she will not. If she knows she is being watched, her behavior will change under observation until what you are seeing is so utterly transformed it becomes a thing intended only for observation, and all realities are lost. And if she doesn’t know she is being watched, what you are seeing is something unprimed, something unfit for performance, something crude and unrefined that you will try and refine yourself: you will try to give it a meaning that it does not inherently possess, and in doing this you will press your daughter into some mold that misunderstands her. So, you see, neither picture is what you might call true. They are distortions.”

“Has she said anything?” Mrs. De Gregorio says. “I know it’s an odd question. It’s embarrassing to have to ask. But is there anything we should know about?” Her hand disappears under her breasts, checking that her purse is still tucked into the vast crux of her lap. Her fingers find the wadded leather lump and touch it briefly.

“Oh, Mrs. De Gregorio. I’m her music teacher,” the sax teacher says. She returns her mug to the table and folds her hands.

“But then what do I do?” Mrs. De Gregorio asks with a kind of rising panic. “What options have I left?”

“You could ask your daughter,” the saxophone teacher says. “You could sit down and actually talk to her. But you always run the risk that she might lie.”

Monday

“What did you imagine while you were watching?” the saxophone teacher asks when Julia arrives for her lesson on Monday afternoon. “At the concert.”

“I liked the second half better than the first half,” Julia begins, but the saxophone teacher waves her arm impatiently and says, “No, I meant what did you think about while you were watching? What sorts of things were you thinking about?”

Julia looks at her curiously, as if this might be a test. “Why?” she asks.

“It’s a game I used to play with an old friend of mine,” the saxophone teacher says. “We had a joke that the better the performance, the more catalytic the effect. A poor performance might only make you think about what you had for dinner or what you were going to wear when you woke up the next day. But a great performance would make you imagine things you would never have been brave enough to imagine before.”