Only one light was on in the house when I arrived home, although it was by then fully dark

outside.

It was the light over the piano.

At first, I thought Mother wasn’t there and I was briefly confounded, trying to imagine where she

could be—she who no longer went anywhere in the evening except to the monthly church

supper. And it wasn’t church-supper week. But then I saw her rise from her chair on the night-

filled screened porch and place her Bible, which she could not have been reading, on the table

next to her.

I waited, hoping she would speak. She didn’t. She stayed in the shadows, looking down at the

book.

“Mother.”

Nothing. I didn’t believe she couldn’t hear me.

“Mother!”

She turned around briskly then and entered the living room. “You don’t have to shout,” she said.

“Where have you been?” “I went for a walk.”

The tortures of Hades could not have wrung from me that I had sought Brownlea’s advice.

“Well, it’s long past teatime. I’ll fix something to eat. Cold beef all right?”

“I’m not hungry, Mother, I want…”

“You may not think you are now, but if you go to bed with-out a bite, you won’t sleep well. Now,

what would you like? There are sardines and some…”

“Mother, I don’t want food! I want to talk to you!”

She stopped as if I had switched her off, gazing away from me at some distant point in the dim

room, gathering herself. After a moment, she turned her head a little toward me and said quite

calmly, “Then we had best sit down.”

Neither of us took the chair that had been my father’s.

I turned on another lamp and sat next to it at one end of the sofa. She did not choose to sit next to

me, perching instead on the piano bench. The light behind her made it hard to see her face.

She waited. She was not going to help me start.

“Mother, why?” My voice cracked, angering me. I spoke more loudly. “Why?”

“Do you mean, why am I sending you to Chicago? I should think it would be obvious—you’ll

need a teacher of the first rank if you’re to have a career.”

“But you’ve never asked me if I wanted a career. And why Chicago? Why not New York or

London? Why should I study with this Hellman geezer? Who is he, anyway?”

“No slang, please. And I’ll thank you not to inundate me with questions.”

Her mouth tightened and she folded her arms over her prim, blue-cotton blouse. She shook her

head as if a gnat were besieging her.

“My dear,” she said tentatively, trying out a foreign expression, “Gunter Hellman was at

university with your father and, unlike him, went on to a distinguished international career. He

plays with all the major European and American orchestras and is on the Chicago Conservatory

faculty. The fact that you have not heard of him signifies only that you are fourteen, not that he is

inconsequential.”

“But…”

“I beg your pardon. I was about to say that I had written to him two years ago to ask if he would

take you as a pupil, and he said that when you were old enough to go to an American high school

and if you were truly devoted to piano, then he would.

“I have prayed every night for the last year, hoping that God would grant you the passion and

ambition to match your talent, so that you would not let it go to waste. It is a sin to waste great

talent or to thwart it in any way. A sin.”

She wasn’t looking at me.

Her fingers gripped the edge of the bench, turning her knuckles livid and making the pale blue

veins strain against the skin of her hands.

“Gunter last wrote me a month ago to say that, if I thought the time was right, you could come to

him this summer. After I heard you play today, I knew you must go.”

“But why didn’t you tell me? You never tell me anything! Why does everything have to be a

secret?”

“You are told as much as you need to know. I can’t have you distracted from your music by

details and half-formed plans that do not require your worry.”

“There’s nothing half-formed about this! You’ve been plot-ting the whole thing since I was

twelve, you just said so! Why won’t you let me decide what my own future will be?”

Mother looked straight at me. Her eyes were as hard as jet beads.

“Your future is entirely up to you. I can’t earn your success for you or prevent your ruin. You

must decide which it is to be.” She stood, as if ready to quit the house and me with it, to stride

off with her sword and take up the cause of some worthier supplicant. I was angry and strangely

terrified that she would leave altogether, who had never really come close. I held out my hand to

stop her. She didn’t take it—she hadn’t taken my hand in years.

“But why aren’t you coming, too?” I said, suddenly pleading. “Why do I have to go by myself?”

She looked away. Was she crying? I had never seen her cry. She turned back to me, dry-eyed.

“You will learn faster on your own,” she said quietly.

“What? About playing?”

“About everything.”

She coughed and stood up, pushing the piano bench in and turning off the lamp.

“You’ll be able to come home for the Christmas holidays,” she continued, already halfway to the

door of her own room. “If you wish.”

She called goodnight without looking back.

I sat for a while, gazing around the room where I suddenly did not belong. I was to go; I was

already gone. The knowledge of my impermanence had, in an hour, made me a ghost in my own

home. Another member of the family who would leave nothing behind but his habitual imprint

on a cushion.

Oddly enough, I now wanted my tea. I went to the kitchen, unearthed some bread and cheese,

and finished them off, along with the rest of the lemonade. A kind of excitement was grow-ing in

me, conjoined to the lump of dread. I was going to study with the best, be the best. Everybody

would know my name. I would never again be locked away alone in silence. I would be

surrounded by cheering audiences, blazingly visible in stage light far friendlier than the sun. I

would succeed.

I rinsed my glass and knife, switched off the lamp in the liv-ing room, and brushed my teeth. The

dark of my room seemed to drown all my hope. I lay in bed and listened to the waves in the

cove, breaking against the beach.

Excerpted from THE CHANGING OF KEYS by Carolyn Jack © 2024 by Carolyn Jack, used

with permission from Regal House Publishing.

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