Janice Lee - The Piano Teacher

“Are you all right?” she asked. The Chinese woman was sitting very still on the edge of the sofa with a cup of tea cooling in front of her.

“No,” she said. “Something’s gone terribly wrong. There’s been a misunderstanding. Everyone’s got the wrong idea.”

“I’m afraid…”

“They cut me,” Melody said with a stricken face. “In town today, I walked through the tea room at the Gloucester, and the room fell silent and no one called out to me, not even Lizzie Lam, and I was at primary school with her. We were best friends. She gave me the chicken pox! She pretended she didn’t see me.”

“I’m sure you are mistaken,” Claire said.

“No, it’s true,” Melody whispered. “People are merciless, you know. In our world, they can be very cruel.”

The hypocrisy of the woman was overwhelming. Melody must have seen Claire’s ambivalence because then she said impatiently, “Oh, you will never understand.

“And you?” she asked suddenly. “I suppose your life is quite different now, as well.”

“Yes,” Claire said. “I’ve telegraphed my parents to let them know my situation. I will probably have to go home.”

“It’s a pretty kettle of fish, isn’t it?” Melody said. “Isn’t that what you English say? And you, somehow involved in it. I’d wager you never imagined you would be in this sort of situation.”

“No,” Claire said. “This is all very foreign to me.”

Melody nodded and got up. “I’ll let Locket know you’re here.”

Claire started to explain but Melody interrupted her.

“They say I took her from Trudy, but I didn’t, you know. Trudy gave her to me.”

Claire opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

Melody went on, in a rush.

“She knew what was coming. She knew she wouldn’t live. And she knew I had lost my baby in California. My baby was born dead. I came home after that. I didn’t want to stay in America by myself, without family. Trudy wanted me to have hers. It was a gift, from one cousin to another. So many people don’t understand, but back in China, it happened all the time, throughout history, particularly during wartime or famine. We are a country used to suffering; our people are practical. Children were given to other members of the family, if they were to be better looked after that way. You Westerners don’t understand. It’s what Trudy wanted, or would have wanted. She knew that Locket would have a good home. And I think Victor thought Locket would be good insurance as well. She is half Japanese, you know, Locket. Half Japanese, a quarter Chinese, a quarter Portuguese. Although you’d never know it to look at her. You’d never know it. You didn’t, did you? And we love her as our own. It was all for the best.”

She stopped, looked confused.

“The doctor told me I could never have any more children, that I would die if I did. So I really had no choice.” She trailed off. “Oh,” she said. “I was going to get Locket.”

She wandered out of the room.

Claire sat in the suddenly silent room. A clock ticked loudly. Some long minutes later, Locket showed up in the drawing room.

“I was waiting for you in the music room,” she said. “I waited and waited and then Ling told me you were here. You were with Mummy?”

Claire looked at the girl with new eyes. Trudy’s child. A girl who had never known her real mother, a child born of violence and deception and desperation. None of this showed on her wide, placid face. The past, her history, had been so easily buried.

“Yes, Locket,” she said. “But I’ve come because I have to let you know something. Why don’t you come and sit down next to me?”

Locket sat down. “Do you want some biscuits?” she asked. “I’m feeling a bit hungry.” She called for a servant and spoke to her in Cantonese. Claire could now tell the difference between the dialects: Shanghainese, Cantonese, Mandarin. Families like Locket’s often spoke all three, as well as English and usually some French. “And will you have a drink, Mrs. Pendleton?”

Suddenly, Claire saw Locket as a miniature Melody, with her assured handling of servants and household matters. But then she blinked. The maid had brought in a plate of jam biscuits with milk, and Locket was a child again, stuffing two in her mouth at once.

“Locket,” she said, “I’ve come to tell you that I cannot teach you any longer.”

“Mmmmmm,” said Locket, with a mouthful of biscuit.

“And that I’ve really enjoyed teaching you, although you never practiced as much as you should have.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Pendleton.”

“But that doesn’t matter. I want to tell you that you are a good girl, and that you can do a great many things. You are sweet and have a real goodness about you. Your innocence is special.”

Locket nodded, her eyes confused.

“I know you don’t understand what I’m talking about, Locket, but I want to tell you. You are a good person. Keep your center. Believe in your instincts. I really wish you the best in life as you go forward.” Claire felt the futility of what she was doing, but pressed on. She wanted desperately to leave Locket with something, anything, that would stick. But the very thing that would brand Locket forever, leave an indelible impression, was what she absolutely could not say. She could not take on that mantle of responsibility.

“Mrs. Pendleton, you make it seem as if I’m going to die or something!”

“I just want you to k now…” she trailed off. “Just know. That is all.” She got up and kissed Locket on the top of her glossy black hair. “Good-bye.”

She left Locket in the drawing room with her biscuits and her look of confusion, and a strange, tumultuous feeling in her own stomach.

IN HIS DREAMS, she comes back to him. In his dreams, she forgives him.

“I was always searching for a saint,” Trudy says. Her hands are intertwined behind his head, her eyes looking up into his. “I thought you were the one.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I never pretended I was one.”

“Oh, I think you did,” she says, without anger. “You always had that saintlike aura around you. People always looked to you for guidance. You radiate confidence. Unlike me. I radiate… unreliability. But I’m much more fun.”

He touches her hair, the fine, glossy strands of umber and bronze.

“I never locked my door because of you,” he tells her. “I thought even if there was the slightest chance you were alive… Stranger things have happened. I couldn’t lock my door because I was tormented by the thought that you’d find your way back to me, and that I’d happen to be out, and that you would leave, and then I would have missed my chance. That’s why I could never move. People always wondered why I stayed there, stuck in the past.”

“Of course I would find you,” she says, in her clear, bell voice. “You’ve forgotten how resourceful I am.”

“You made me want to be the worst kind of man,” he confesses. “If I had a family, I would have left it for you. If you wanted a bauble, I would have stolen it for you. If you told me to kill somebody, I very well might have done so. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, and that’s the most terrible thing in the world. So I had to get away from it. I had to get away from you, to preserve myself.”

“Well,” she says, amused. “I don’t know if that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me, or the nastiest.”

She has always told him she is not dependable, that she will leave him in an instant, that she is not to be trusted, but in all her declarations, he has just to look into her eyes, and he doesn’t believe her.

“I like to think about when all this is over,” she says. “I’m going to have ice cream and champagne at every meal and bathe in honey and wine. I am going to be so profligate, you have no idea! I’m going to act every inch the heiress and demand every extravagance-only soaps and scents from France will touch my skin and fresh, exotic flowers on my bedside table every night. This restraint is just killing me. I’ve become a dour, wartime matron and I intend to scrub every inch of that loathsome person off as soon as…” But she cannot say what will end the war.