Andy Abramowitz - Thank You, Goodnight

The echoing tap of heels on asphalt hooked my attention as the blonde in the tight elastic shirt came teetering out of the mini-mart with her companion’s arm cradled possessively over her neck. For a passing instant, I fantasized about dropping the phone where I stood and scrambling onto that bus with them.

“What can I do, Sara?” I asked.

“Do? Nothing. There’s nothing to do.”

She was right.

“I can come home,” I finally said.

She let out a long, lilting release of a laugh that soared high, then tumbled in descending rungs back down to her pillow. “Yes, Teddy. You can come home.”

I replaced the nozzle and screwed on the gas cap. Behind me, the bus doors squeaked closed and the huge monstrosity rumbled away. I stared after it, watching the red taillights glide down the highway, carrying some other poor fucker’s demons on its rude haunches.

From the last row of a high school auditorium, I listened to labored cacophony, the hummable melody of “Morning Mood” just barely discernible through the clamor of lawless instruments. At long last, this composition, Suite 1 from Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt , a melody of pacific beauty, the official soundtrack to a rising sun, made me smile.

The piece had appeared in one of my early piano books, and my mangled interpretation of it would cause my teacher, poor old Mr. Green, to cower in the chair next to the piano, cursing me under his breath. My parents had suggested I take up an instrument, but they couldn’t have been heartened by my lack of progress or by the checks they wrote week after futile week, which Old Man Green sourly accepted before he made for the door. In the wake of each dispiriting lesson, my dad would appear at the top of the steps and offer his own brand of encouragement: “You don’t have to do this anymore if you don’t want to.” I wasn’t very good back in those days, so when I became a professional musician, the joke was on everyone who’d doubted me. When the band went to hell because, frankly, we weren’t very good, the joke was back on me again. Where it has remained for a good long while.

Since those demeaning hours on my parents’ piano bench, the seasons have spun around and the years have turned over and over, but it turned out that kids were still butchering the very same music.

At first, all I could see of him were arms waving in the flow of the sound, imploring the players to respect pitch and tempo. As the piece wore on, the limbs betrayed just the faintest touches of frustration, then resignation, and finally failure. When the noise stopped, there came the voice.

“Well, it needs some work, guys. Right? Julie, you’ve got to play the right notes. It’s not like just any notes will do. You’ve got to play the ones on the sheet. And Kenny, your timing today is a huge improvement over last time, so good for you, but it’s still terrible. Tap your foot, count under your breath, do something. Friends, we’ve all got to play the same song and we’ve all got to play it at the same speed. This is not a hard piece. You’re making it sound like ‘Giant Steps,’ but trust me, this is an easy one . . . I’m seeing blank stares. Don’t tell me you don’t know ‘Giant Steps.’ Nobody here knows ‘Giant Steps’ by John Coltrane? How am I supposed to work under these conditions? Go home tonight and tell your parents they have failed you!

“Back to Grieg. So—we’re going to practice and practice and it’s going to get better and better. It just has to. Do any of you practice, by the way? I’ll take your word for it, but . . .” Then I heard the laugh, an injection of levity into the criticism. “All right, my friends. Let’s call it a day.”

The stage burst into a symphony of squeaking chairs, rustling papers, and chattering teenagers.

“Go on home,” he bade them. “Practice your instruments. Get ‘Giant Steps’ from wherever it is you steal music these days.”

Collecting themselves and their gear, the students emptied the stage and staggered past me out the back of the auditorium. A plucky, pint-sized, ponytailed blonde, whom Warren had addressed as Julie and who’d Sweeney Todded the hell out of Peer Gynt with her violin, was the last to leave, loitering by the stage. I began a slow shuffle down the aisle. Plucky, pint-sized, ponytailed blondes were always the last to leave the classroom. Class itself was never enough. It was too diluted, not sufficiently tailored to their own individualized needs. It was after class that the real schooling happened. I made my way toward them undetected.

“But Mr. Warren”—the panic was spurting forth like a mortal wound—“I’ve been practicing for, like, three hours every night. I’m really nervous that I’m never going to get it right and the concert is only a few weeks away and I’m going to blow it for everybody. Do you think maybe I should get a tutor?”

“A tutor? For concert band?” He laughed wearily as he gathered up his papers, his sloped shoulders speaking volumes about the tiresome frequency of Julie’s visits. “You’ve got to not let yourself get all whipped up into a tizzy. You’re very tense when you’re playing. We’ve discussed that. You can’t be tense when you’re playing ‘Morning Mood.’ That’s about as chill a piece of music as there is. Have you actually listened to the piece? Grieg is taking you somewhere very calm, very peaceful. It’s early morning. There’s a sunrise, maybe some butterflies. Nothing has come along yet to stress you out. Can you access that?”

“But Mr. Warren, I’m just worried that everybody else is getting better and even though I’ve been practicing like crazy, I’m still messing it up.”

“I wouldn’t say everyone else is getting better. No, I wouldn’t say that at all.” He was stuffing papers into his satchel, probably contemplating dinner.

By this point, I had almost joined their conversation. I stood just outside the spotlight ring that encircled teacher and student. His eyes flashed briefly in my direction, but he kept at it with the squeaky violinist.

“Julie, I’m going to give you the same advice I gave you yester—” He stopped dead. Then he turned and looked at me. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I stepped out of the darkness. “Hello, Mr. Warren.”

“Teddy Tremble, in the flesh,” Warren marveled. “What are you doing here?”

I smiled. “My dog ate my homework.”

We hugged. A sinewy network of muscles under his button-down shirt brushed up against my middle-age spread. Bastard was still in shape, even if the avuncular chin-curtain beard put a few years on him.

Warren turned to Julie. “Can we continue this tomorrow? Seems I have an unexpected visitor.”

“I guess so,” she chirped tentatively, her features bucking in distress.

Warren and I stared at each other, grins advancing across our faces as Julie strode out of the auditorium, the anxious echo of her footsteps trailing behind.

“So let me guess,” Warren said. “You think I’m the one who hung that picture in the Tate, and you’ve come to kick my ass.”

“I’ve recently learned that my ass-kicking days might be behind me. It’s really good to see you, even under all that facial hair.”

He caressed the tightly coiled curls on his chin. “Had it for years, but every day there seems to be more salt and less pepper.”

Warren was a kid during the band years, a spasmodic axis of pep and punch riding bareback on a constant beat. He’d aged, but not in the weathered, deteriorating, line-carving sense. His was the seasoned, fortifying type of growing older.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.

“Can we go somewhere and talk?”

“Look, if this has something to do with that stupid photo, I’m telling you, I didn’t snap it and I didn’t hang it up.”