Four Seasons…April

Written by Writer Dad on December 9, 2009 - View Comments
Categories: Writing

Laney buzzed around her bedroom in the back of her parents house, like an insect trapped between window and shade. She stepped across a carpet of long ignored debris, trying to determine what she hated more – the eighteen year old brats she taught at the City College on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, or the tiny brats who drained her of every weekend and nearly all of her evenings.

Monday through Friday, it was usually the college kids who ignited the flame of her ire, but today, the day before the dog barking April recital, it was the smaller ones which brought the bitter broth inside her brain to a rolling boil.

Of course, the children weren’t the worst. She could almost stomach them, if it wasn’t for the horrible parents who came along, like poison inside a poinsettia. What sort of parent started their child on an instrument as difficult as the violin when they were only three years old and barely out of diapers? What could they possibly expect?

Yet Laney knew exactly what they expected, the same thing her own parents had. Each of them imagined their own kid as a prodigy, regardless of the cold reality. Most of the children weren’t even close to being able to hold the instrument correctly; forget about striking a proper note or pleasant tone.

The worst part of the lessons was how mad the parents always seemed to get when she corrected their children. Didn’t they realize she was only trying to help? Apparently not. Laney could feel the weight inside the room grow heavier every time she tried to help one of the little brats with their bow hold. What did they expect her to do – use magic, or maybe telekinesis?

Tomorrow Laney would have to play nice with all of the parents at the same time, and for a torturously long ninety minutes. The thought made her feel like filling the toilet bowl with her breakfast; a task which she was behind schedule to get done anyway. If her parents would just leave the gosh yarn house for fifteen minutes and take their morning walk like they were supposed to, she could have a private moment to take care of business.

She never had any privacy and it seemed like her parents did everything in their power to keep it that way. They’d probably go on their walk right as her ten o’clock lesson was standing on the porch and ringing the doorbell, and return the second it was over.

And they would do it just to Capital P her off.

It was time for Laney to start thinking about getting her own place, again. The last time she’d tried, when she was thirty-six, things had gone horribly wrong. But that was almost five years earlier and she was definitely ready to at least think about trying again.

She was ready to order a pizza without asking her father what he wanted on top. She was ready to have her mother pick up her own french fry flipping prescriptions. She was ready to let them pour their own baths. And she was definitely ready to stay out late without having to explain where she was (not that any of the places she frequented were even worth explaining).

Her parents never asked her straight out, but Laney knew they wanted to know. She could feel it behind their pleasant expressions when she opened the door, just like she could feel it behind all the questions they never asked.

Money wasn’t an issue. Between her teaching and the violin studio Laney ran in the tiny unventilated den just across the hall from her bedroom nestled in the furthest corner of her parent’s modest house, she had plenty. Laney had only been on her own for six months in her entire life and had been squirreling away for the rest of her adulthood.

Problem was, a night time without her parents made Laney feel like a toddler lost at Disneyland. Too much open space colliding against too many decisions. Daytime was fine, Laney could go to her classes and teach her barely literate students basic English. On days when she wasn’t teaching, all she had to do was go for a walk to feel better. It was difficult to feel alone during the day.

Nighttime was different.

Night was when the lonely came out to ask Laney the questions she hated to answer. Nighttime reminded her that she needed her mommy and daddy like a two-year old needs their saliva soaked blanket. Nighttime brought the Scarecrow and all his friends.

The doorbell’s sharp chime pulled Laney from her daze. The ring arrived right when she expected, singing in perfect time to her parent’s swinging the door open to take their morning walk.

Of course, Laney thought. Now she would have to make nice with the Mott Family for thirty minutes in the otherwise empty house. And she could just bet that all three of them would be traipsing arrogantly through her home like they owned the place. Didn’t they realize her studio was way too small for a family of three to share the space for half an hour?

“Hello,” Laney said pleasantly, through teeth that she alone knew were gritted.

Laney was relieved to see that it was just the two girls walking through the door. Mommy must have let daddy off his leash for the morning.

“Okay, girls, you know where to go. I’ll take care of Mooch.” Laney directed Kimmy and her mother to the back of the house while she led her oversized St. Bernard into the sun room where he would wait out the lesson.

“Now, you no be a stinky muffin,” Laney cooed into his giant espresso colored eyes. “You be KI-YET and no be a bad PUP-PEE!”

Laney closed the sun room door and began to walk down the hall, her heart skipping a beat when she saw the threshold of her bedroom had an open seam. She didn’t remember leaving it open, was horrified that she had, and immediately began to obsess about what, if anything, had been seen by the Motts.

“Sorry,” she said, entering the tiny studio. “My students this semester,” she sighed dramatically, “are giving me such a headache. Hand me your violin,” she said to little Kimmy. “I’m sure it needs tuning.”

Kimmy handed her violin to Laney and Laney tuned it while continuing to discuss college students who had no bearing on the lives of the student presently in the room or her mom, both sitting patiently on the couch waiting for their teacher to finish. Laney rambled on, adding the occasional aside about how horribly out of tune Kimmy’s violin sounded for the next seven minutes until, finally, Mrs. Mott looked at her watch and said, “Um, Ms. Laney, I think we should get going with our lesson.”

A flash of anger flared inside Laney’s head.

She’s always correcting me. If she knows so much, why doesn’t she just teach her daughter to play the violin herself? Because she can’t! That’s why. I’m the one with the credential. I’m the one with the certificate. I’m the one who has been taking lessons since she was four!

Laney swallowed her anger and continued. The next twenty-two minutes promised to pass at an excruciating crawl unless Laney allowed her mind to leave the studio and burrow inside the depths of her own to-do’s.

She began to organize her lesson plans for the coming week and imagined summoning the courage to ask for mushrooms on the evening pizza (her parents always said they didn’t care, but she knew they didn’t mean it). She thought about the small stack of things she needed to get in the mail and made a mental note to ask for permission to check her email on her mom’s computer.

As so often happened when she tried to box her mind inside the pleasant boundaries, the bad thoughts dug their heels in and spun her in a different direction, quickly moving Laney from nowhere in particular toward some of her most unsettling memories.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow! She could hear the children on the playground taunting her.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow! The catcalls grew louder and more incessant.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow!

“That’s not the way you’re supposed to do it,” Laney snapped from her trance and grabbed little Kimmy’s hand at the wrist. “Remember, do it like I showed you!”

Laney dropped Kimmy’s limb and played the piece herself, as mechanically as if a quarter had been inserted in her side.

“Well, it looks like it’s that time.” Laney finished the tune and set her violin in its case, then glanced at the clock in disbelief – the lesson still had three minutes to go.

“Kimmy, honey, could you please go and wait in the hall for me. Ms. Laney and I need a moment alone.”

“Of course, Mom.”

“Ms. Laney,” Kimmy’s mom started about seven seconds after Kimmy had left the room. “I know we’ve discussed this before, but I feel I need to remind you. You may not grab my daughter, especially with the amount of force you are using.”

“How is she supposed to learn,” Laney snapped, “if she can’t even follow simple directions?”

Mrs. Mott remained silent. She looked like she was chewing on a mouthful of nails, just starting to rust. “Do not touch my daughter like that. Ever again.” Mrs. Mott broke her stare and headed for the door. “We will see you at the recital tomorrow.”

The word recital soaked Laney’s tongue in bile. She hated the recitals, was not looking forward to the next day, and certainly had not needed the reminder.

Laney closed the door, resisting the urge to slam it, then stomped to her bedroom. She could hear the front door open and her parents speaking with the Mott girls. It figured, her parents would probably ask Mrs. Mott why she looked upset and she would probably tell them. That meant that she would get a ‘talking to.’ And of course, it would happen the day before the recital.

She wished she could just do away with the performances altogether. They were such complete cacadoo. But the truth was that for Laney, canceling the recital was about as likely as her mother canceling Bingo on a Thursday evening.

The worst part wasn’t the children, or the awful sound of their crunchy playing. The worst part was the parents. Those moms and dads were just as bratty as their children, every single one. And they felt entitled to a formal recital at least twice a year.

Laney wished they would just get it through their heads – they weren’t paying for the recitals. They were paying for her to listen to the awful wail of their children’s awkward playing for thirty long minutes every week.

Who were the recitals supposed to be for anyway? Any relative outside the immediate family had to loathe the obligation, and that was before the insulting assault on their ears which started the second those children started playing.

Of course, the camp Laney had enrolled in to earn her credential (which she was forced to attend, just so she could get a stinking piece of paper that said she was allowed to teach a bunch of half-wit toddlers, even though she had been playing the instrument nearly her entire life), said the recitals were for the children. The instructors at camp said that the performances were so the little ones could learn to be confident, demonstrate what they had learned and help them to feel comfortable playing in front of an audience.

But Laney knew that was ridiculous. She had seen these children. They could barely understand simple commands, they certainly had nothing to crow about. Laney had gotten used to the idea of being cursed with the recitals, even though they still made her completely uncomfortable. The best she would be able to do until Sunday afternoon was count the long minutes until the whole thing was finally over.

The next twenty-six hours flew by in a blur and before she knew it, Laney found herself setting the last chair at the back of the final row.

She sat down.

In a few more minutes, the first grandparents would start to arrive. Grandparents always showed up a few minutes before everybody else. They had more time in their day. Laney’s own parents would be arriving soon, which meant that these last few minutes were her final moments of peace.

Laney looked around at the peeling paint of the church’s small assembly hall and felt a sudden flare of anger at her obligatory donation. Of course she had paid it, but why should she have had to pay anything at all? She wasn’t the one who had a problem with recitals being held at the park.

Laney had loved it when the recitals were at the park (if they had to be somewhere in the first place), she was just sick of hearing the parents complain about the outdoors. Sure it had been known to occasionally sprinkle in the middle of April, and Caleb did get pigeon caca on his violin the previous spring, but these things happened. Life wasn’t perfect. No one could expect her to control the weather or the flight paths of birds, could they?

The Hollywood Bowl hosted all their concerts outside and Laney seriously doubted anyone had ever raised a flag of complaint about that.

Warm air spilled into the room, defrosting the overly air conditioned interior and pulling Laney’s attention toward the door just as the Jackson family was entering the church. Little Jimmy Jackson, both parents, three grandparents, a younger sibling (whose hands they would probably shove a violin into the day after his next birthday) and an older looking woman just ugly enough, Laney thought, to be from the mother’s homelier branch of the family tree.

“Hi,” Laney chimed, bounding from her chair. “I’m thrilled so many of you came. The children are really excited. Today’s performance is going to be fantastic!”

Jimmy’s mother started to jabber at Laney, while Laney did her best to tune out the barrage of senseless noise. Still, the occasional phrase still managed to bore past the outer crust of her mind. Laney couldn’t help but hear: “Jimmy’s been practicing so hard,” “We really can’t wait,” and “Jimmy has really been looking forward to this.”

No he hasn’t. Jimmy can barely count to ten and probably didn’t even know it was his recital until you were unloading him from the car.

Laney was relieved when Connor Bradshaw and clan entered the room, affording her the opportunity to carve a speedy exit from the Jacksons. The following forty minutes were filled with all the forced insincerity Laney could manage without adding the muffin she’d just inhaled from the spread on the rented table directly into the toilet.

“We’re about ready to begin,” Laney announced just as the clock was striking one. “If everybody could take their seats, we’ll get started.”

Laney continued to speak in an overly pleasant voice, each word to Laney feeling as though it was scraping the insides of her throat. She approached the podium just as chorus of metronomic chants churned to life in the deep chasms of her mind.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow, Scarecrow, Scarecrow…

Laney ignored the taunts. She picked up her own violin and bow, and began to play a simple rhythm that any three year old should be able to play, though most (in her opinion) could not.

The leaders of the recital group joined Laney two bars in. The rest followed.

The entire room swelled with the pleasant sounds of children doing their best to make music, along with the happy sighs from a dozen delighted families.

Laney’s anxiety grew.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow, Scarecrow…

Old memories taunted her. Laney played louder as she attempted to suffocate the taunting chant.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow, Scarecrow…

Laney started to sweat. The acrid scent of perspiration may have been only in her mind, but even that knowledge did nothing to diffuse its power.

She turned her mind from the children and spun from the parents, grandparents, siblings, and extended families. Laney shut her eyes and started to play.

Laney played sweetly and without seams, every note as if by instinct. There were no mechanics in her motion, just one fluid sweep falling seamlessly into the next, pushing the sound further inside its own majesty like many small waves eventually merging into a single tsunami.

The piece was finished. The children stopped playing. Laney kept going.

She performed fast, fluid, and more furious than any teacher who had ever sat above her would ever have believed. The first drop of genuine perspiration left her brow and started the puddle which would soon glaze the floor.

Laney played faster, the notes in the air becoming part of the oxygen she breathed. Her mind began to wander. She imagined the chaos inside her bedroom – the empty bags of chips; the mountains of crumpled clothing; the papers and countless face down books which littered every surface.

Thought grew strong, Laney played stronger.

Her thoughts began to evaporate like dew beneath the sun.

Laney annihalated thoughts of her bedroom, thoughts of her parents and thoughts of her award winning little brother finishing his final year at Juliard, with every downward thrust of her bow.

Laney stopped playing. She wished she had a scabbard in which to drop her bow, such drama would be a fitting end to the battle she had waged on stage and in her mind.

For thirty-five years, Laney had pinched her nose and swallowed the violin, no different than a tablespoon of Robitussen during the peak of a cough.

The dry numeracy of her study had just been miraculously slain alongside her demons.

A phoenix had risen to take flight from the still smoldering ashes.

For the first time Laney had truly felt the music she was playing. Each note had become a part of her in the way she was sure they were supposed to have from the beginning; a way, she was certain, they never had before.

She took the first curtsy that she truly ever earned and stood in front of a quietly stunned audience of adults and children who did not know quite what to think, though they all knew that they were feeling something.

The room flooded with applause.

Laney began to cry.