We had us a magical piano, and I couldn’t wait to show it off.
“I can’t play a lick with you staring so hard it’s boring a hole in my back,” I said to Sissy. “Turn the other way, but first pinky swear cross your heart you won’t peek.”
She gave me a look that meant she’d do it, but she wouldn’t like it. Although we were best friends, I knew she was getting tired of me bossing her, so I started playing the minute she turned her back. I didn’t want to lose my audience. Stretching my legs to reach, I pedaled hard, managing to play “You are My Sunshine” all the way through without a hitch.
“How’d you learn that so good?” Previous dealings with me had led to her suspicious nature.
“It’s playing by ear,” I told her. “At least that’s what Grandma calls it. That’s when you hear something once and sit down and play it good as it sounds on the radio. Soon as I sat down I started playing songs front to finish just as pretty as you please.”
Grandpa called that a gift-wrapped lie. He was against lying in all its forms, but he thought a half-lie was about the worst kind. Folks, he said, didn’t expect to find a lie in the middle when you wrapped it up in the truth and tied a big red bow on it.
It was the kind of lying I did best.
I got away with it several times before Sissy broke her vow not to look and caught me red-handed changing the piano roll. It was quite a while before she believed a word I said.
And I didn’t believe her pinky-swear-cross-your-heart promise either.
Mr. Pursley, who lived on the second floor of a fancy house on Woodlawn Avenue, came highly recommended, so Mother took us to meet him and make arrangements for lessons. Holding his hand out, palm down and fingers extended, he looked more like he expected my mother to kiss his hand than shake it.
He offered her the chair to his right and motioned me and Vonnie to a small settee, while he arranged his slim body on the tapestry fainting couch. I fought to keep myself from brushing the city bus off my behind before sullying the needlepointed tapestry I was about to sit on. Glad I had on my best Sunday dress, I tugged it over my scabby knees.
“I’ve prepared a light tea,” he said. “You and the young ladies must join me.”
Heels barely touching the floor, he glided out, reappearing in a few minutes balancing a tray laden with a silver teapot and china cups as thin as painted eggshells.
Mr. Pursley leaned forward. “Would you care for a watercress sandwich? And a petit four, perhaps?”
I had always taken my chances with food, so I took one of each.
Mr. Pursley leaned a little more toward Mother. “If I may, I have a few questions regarding the young ladies’ lessons.”
Mr. Pursley wanted to know what day and what time and how long the lessons would be and would we come to his studio or prefer he come to our home and by the way did we have a piano suitable for practice? It was decided we would go to his studio every Wednesday afternoon from five to six for one half hour each, and yes, we certainly did have a piano suitable for practice—then, and only then, Mr. Pursley accepted us as students.
And so began our foray into Mr. Pursley’s world.
Each week Mother sipped cups of oolong tea in the parlor while he played for us before we began lessons. Hands arched over the keyboard with the tension of a small animal set to strike, he announced the piece and the composer before he began. The opening of “Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1” filled the room—soft slow, louder faster, soft again. Then, as the crescendo built, his fingers blistered over the keyboard, his eyes closed, and perspiration misted his upper lip.
One day Mr. Pursley told Mother we were to perform at his annual recital concert at Memorial Hall. He never asked if we wanted to be in it. To be fair, he never said we had to either. It didn’t matter. There was no getting around it with Mother and Grandma all atwitter.
It rained a gully washer on recital day, threatening to ruin the dress Grandma made me from a silk World War II parachute Mother ordered cheap from the back of a magazine. She made Vonnie a parachute dress too. Then she made bedspreads for every bed in the house with some of the leftover silk. When I sat on my parachute bedspread in my parachute dress, I almost disappeared.
By evening it had almost rained itself out, so we arrived only a little damp and a little late. When it was my turn, I walked across the stage beaming my best Lana Turner smile. Not watching where I was going, I tripped and fell flat, catching my heel and ripping my new dress. Although I didn’t break anything, my pride was bruised to the bone. I made it through my piece, but my heart wasn’t in it. I wanted to go home. I wanted to cry. I wanted to start all over.
But most of all, I wanted to play in another concert.
And next time I wouldn’t fall on my behind.
Grandma got it into her head that if we could play good enough to be in a concert, we could assuredly accompany her and Grandpa singing a duet for Sunday services. The fact that she could not sing a lick was just a bothersome detail she felt she could overcome with practice and the help of the Lord. And if Grandma thought Grandpa could sing, well then, he would just have to oblige her.
She borrowed one of the red hymnals from church and sat at
