Barbara Wilkins - Elements of Chance

At Sunset Boulevard, she transferred onto another bus, that took her west to Crescent Heights, in the middle of the Sunset Strip. Looming over the strip as far as her eye could see were huge painted billboards advertising Smirnoff vodka, Marlboros, movies. A new Beatles album. The Rolling Stones.

As Valerie stepped into the crosswalk, a boy sitting on the back of a convertible, his hair to his shoulders, his fingers spread in the sign of peace shouted, “Make love, not war.” Umm, he’s cute, she thought, smiling.

I wonder what my life would be like if I didn’t have my music? I’d probably be marching against the war in Vietnam, listening to the Beatles and the Stones, going out on dates. But there’s no time for that. She sighed as she walked past Schwab’s Drugstore. There isn’t time for anything, really, except my lessons, my practicing, getting ready for competitions.

Valerie saw that the lights in her family’s apartment were still burning. Even before she put her key in the door, Valerie could hear Muffin, her mother’s miniature apricot French poodle, panting and scratching on the other side.

Valerie scooped the little dog into her arms as it licked her face, wild with joy. On the flowered couch, her mother lay asleep, her bleached blond hair in blue rollers and her coarse face lathered with the latest rejuvenating night cream. Her voluptuous body was wrapped in a tired yellow terrycloth robe.

With the little dog cradled in her arms, Valerie crept across the room to her bedroom. She kicked off her shoes as she turned on the light. Her twin bed was covered by a white chenille bedspread. A nightstand with a reading lamp stood in the corner, next to the desk where she did her homework. The shelves were filled with Story Book dolls dressed in costumes from different countries.

Her father wouldn’t be home for a few hours. He was working as a bartender at a restaurant with a piano bar a couple of blocks away, he said, from the place where Nat King Cole had been discovered in the forties. He knew all about things like that. Al Hemion usually worked as an agent, booking dates in clubs and at piano bars. His clients were either the ones who tried for the big time and should have made it, or the ones who had just been kidding themselves from the beginning. When things were slow in the business, it was back to bartending. At least it paid the bills—or some of them, anyway. But sometimes, Valerie would lie in her bed, the pillow over her head, trying not to hear the ugly fights her parents had about money.

The big issue of the moment was the Cadillac El Dorado that Al had just bought. It was red, with a real leather interior that smelled wonderful.

“How are we going to pay for it, Al?” Vicki said the day he drove it home. “It’ll be repossessed like the last one. Isn’t it bad enough we have every bill collector in town after us?”

“You gotta keep up appearances in this town. You know that,” Al shouted.

“God, I never should have married you,” Vicki went on. “You’ve never been anything. You never will be.”

“You dumb cunt!” he finally yelled, storming out of the apartment. Valerie and Vicki sat there, looking at each other for a moment. Then, with a little sigh, Vicki turned on the television set and went into the tiny kitchen to get herself a beer.

At one time Valerie’s mother had been a contract player for Twentieth Century–Fox. When one of her old movies came on television, she would scream for Valerie to come and watch it with her. Vicki Drew was the gum-chewing waitress, the girl behind the counter in a department store, the moll sitting beside the gangster who was just about to be blown away. In those faded movies of the early fifties, Vicki was blond and luscious, with her big sensuous mouth that always looked as if she had just run her tongue over it.

“Sorry about that scene, baby,” Vicki sighed, sipping her beer. “God, he never learns. Marry a rich guy, baby, so you’ll have beautiful things.”

“Mom, I don’t even have time to date. I love my music. That’s enough for me.”

“You’re fourteen,” Vicki replied, patting Valerie’s arm. “Wait a few years.”

Some evenings when Al was working, she and Valerie would go through Vicki’s old scrapbooks. Vicki would cry at the sight of herself in a black-and-white publicity still, fair and pouting, looking over her bare shoulder to seduce the camera’s eye. Or, she would be in a two-piece bathing suit, her shoulders thrown back, her big breasts thrust forward, her long, pretty legs demurely crossed at the ankles, as she leaned against a palm tree. And there were snapshots of Vicki holding Valerie in her arms, her brassy blondness overwhelming the tiny, pale infant who looked at the camera with pleading eyes.

These days, Vicki worked as an extra, or as a manicurist at a beauty salon on the Sunset Strip.

Valerie remembered how frightening her parents had seemed to her when she was a baby. Their largeness, their loudness, had seemed to take up all the space available. When Valerie was a young child she pretended she was really a princess who had been kidnapped from the castle and her real parents, the king and queen, would find her one day. The fantasy made her feel guilty until a couple of her girlfriends happened to say that they had the same fantasy.

Valerie had been picking out little tunes on Al’s upright piano since she was old enough to scramble onto the bench. One of Al’s clients convinced Al and Vicki that Valerie should have lessons from a qualified teacher. Valerie remembered the tears of frustration as she spent hours practicing basic exercises and hating her demanding teacher, Nancy Carroll. By the time she was five, though, all of the hard work had started to pay off. She was playing Bach, Chopin, and Mozart with a technique that was precise and elegant.

That year, she was one of the children selected to perform for the Southwestern Musical Society. She stood in the wings, waiting her turn, wearing a white organdy dress embroidered with yellow daisies, and a yellow bow in her pale hair. There were butterflies in her stomach as she heard, for the first time, her name announced by the mistress of ceremonies and hesitantly walked onto the stage to polite applause. As she made a little bow to the audience, she heard the cheering from the middle of the second row, and smiled gratefully as she saw Al and Vicki, beaming with pride. After that, it was easy.

6

Max Perlstein, the brilliant composer and studio musician, occasionally took on a promising piano student, and when Valerie was ten, Nancy Carroll arranged for her to audition for him. Valerie had been terrified, not knowing what to expect. He was very nice, though. He was very casual. Tall and thin, he had long blond hair down to his shoulders. He wore jeans, a shirt, and loafers with no socks.

His house in Bel-Air sat on a half acre of land. It was low and rambling, vaguely Spanish, with light hardwood floors and very little furniture in the living room. Sofas flanked the stone fireplace, and a chunk of glass on a base served as a coffee table. The Steinway, of course. Several good oriental rugs. A few large expressionist paintings. Hundreds of books. Two German shepherds.

Valerie sat stiffly on the edge of one of the sofas as Max and Nancy bantered and laughed about mutual friends. Looking around the huge room, she realized the only times she had ever seen a house like this was in movies or in magazines.

She performed what she had rehearsed for months with Nancy, remembering her teacher’s words. “Feel the music.” She played a Beethoven sonata, part of a Mozart concerto, and finally a Bach fugue. Finishing, she turned toward Max. He was leaning forward, the expression on his face interested.

“Your technique’s pretty good,” he said, smiling. “Let’s try it out for a couple of weeks to see how we work together.”