Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Diana
July 2007
T wo years after Madeline first discovered the piano, Diana entered her into her first competition: a seven-and-under pianist contest that required the kids to have their pieces memorized and perform in front of an audience of about two hundred. Had it been Diana up against those odds, Diana would have fainted. But Madeline was made of different stuff. During the weeks leading up to the contest, Madeline worked diligently, rehearsing the same bars over and over again until her wrists and fingers ached. They went shopping for a simple black velvet dress and a bow to put in Madeline’s red hair. The night before the contest, Diana couldn’t sleep and poured herself a glass of wine and watched YouTube videos of her mother, performing with the USSR and, later, with the Berlin Philharmonic. Barbara was in her fifties with no end to her career in sight. Meanwhile, Diana continued to clean houses and took a late-night job at the bar across the street from where they lived, keeping one eye out the window to ensure there were no disturbances and Madeline slept through the night. It was a necessity. Piano lessons were not cheap.
The morning of the contest, Diana made them a light breakfast and drove them to the university, where they checked in and went to a practice room so Madeline could warm up. According to the program, Madeline was the fifth out of sixteen, which was a good thing. It meant that she didn’t have too much time to get nervous. Diana sat in the practice room, listening as her daughter went through her arpeggios and played the first half of the piece. Then, Madeline swung her legs around the piano bench and raised her chin to look at her mother.
“What’s up, Bean?” Diana asked, smiling.
“I don’t know. I’m ready.” Madeline shrugged.
“Are you?” Diana smiled, scooching her chair forward so that she and her daughter could hold hands. Together, they did a little patty-cake game, smacking each other’s palms and saying a rhyme. They giggled. Diana watched her daughter’s glinting eyes and said a small prayer of thanks and please. All she wanted was her daughter to go up on stage and show the judges what she was made of.
As it turned out, Diana had no need to be worried. Madeline played her piece perfectly and secured first place—far outpacing the kids aged six and seven. The judge who handed Madeline her trophy bent down, beaming, and said into the microphone, “Madeline, you are clearly a very special little girl. We wish you good luck in the future, and I’m sure we’ll see you again.”
Madeline beamed and raised her hand to wave at her mother in the audience.
“Who are you waving at?” the judge asked, following Madeline’s gaze.
“My mommy!”
The judge caught Diana’s eyes and smiled so sensationally that Diana’s heart skipped a beat.
Later, as Madeline and Diana were in the lobby and getting ready to go, that same judge caught up to them. He was maybe in his mid-thirties with thinning black hair and a long, slender body. “Hey!” he said, laughing at himself. “I’m glad I caught you. Madeline, you were sensational today.”
Madeline said, “We’re going home, and we’re going to get pizza!”
The judge laughed again. “I love pizza.”
Diana arched her eyebrow and steadied her own smile. She knew this judge was the sort of person she needed to suck up to, if only for the future of her daughter’s career. So she said, “Thanks a lot for today.”
“You don’t need to thank me. Madeline won in a landslide,” he said.
Diana tried to smile bigger but found that her cheeks ached. There was a strange silence. She didn’t know what to say. “Well, thank you.”
“Listen,” the judge said, “my name is, um, Adam, and I was wondering if you’d ever like to grab a drink with me. That is if you’re not, you know, with someone?” Adam made a big show of looking right to left to see if, by some miracle, Madeline’s father would appear through the crowd.
“Oh!” Diana was taken off guard. She hadn’t been asked out on a date in years, but when she had, she’d immediately said no, that she was too busy, that she was a single mother working multiple jobs. But Adam was a pianist, an important judge on Madeline’s route to stardom. Did that mean that Diana had to say yes? And what if she wanted to say yes?
“It’s no pressure,” Adam said.
Madeline was playing with her trophy, swinging it around, laughing to herself. Diana fought the urge to tear it out of Madeline’s hands and say act like an adult! She was five, for goodness’ sake. She cleared her throat and said, “That would be nice.”
What was she doing? But already, Adam was getting her number and saying that he was free on Friday night if she was. She heard herself agree. Madeline usually had five-hour piano lessons on Friday evenings, and Diana usually sat around at the piano teacher’s house, waiting and pretending to read a book. Maybe this was a better use of her time.
That Friday, Diana picked Madeline up from kindergarten and drove her to her piano teacher’s house, where the piano teacher greeted her with open arms and waved at Diana. “Not coming in today?”
“I have some things to do,” Diana said.
The piano teacher nodded. “Good. We have a lot of work to do! Can’t stop the momentum!”
Diana got back in her car and went home to shower, shave her legs, and figure out how to do her makeup before Adam picked her up. She’d told him that she needed to pick Madeline up by eight thirty, and he’d agreed to an early walk plus a dinner. He’d said, “I know what it’s like to take care of a prodigy. Everything comes down to what they need and when they need it. But I hope we can have a little fun while she’s away.”
It was the first time someone had suggested Diana wasn’t addressing her needs. It was the first time Diana had really thought about her own needs in years—probably ever since Madeline’s birth. She wondered about her own mother in Poland. Obviously, even after giving birth, Barbara Nowak had been thinking about her needs, her career, and everything that came with it. This was partially why Diana’s father had always said that Barbara didn’t want to be a mother. But what if mothers could have it all? What if they could marry a prince and pursue their dreams and help their children rise to the top? Was it even possible?
Adam and Diana walked along the Grand River. Adam was wearing a pair of jeans and a light green polo shirt that made him look clean and respectable and nothing like Madeline’s father, Allen. Adam told Diana that he’d studied piano at Juilliard but hadn’t had the chops to pursue “a professional career in the traditional sense.” Diana was shocked.
“But you got into Juilliard!” she said. “Doesn’t that mean something?”
“It did at first,” he admitted. “I was pleased to get in, and I worked very hard. But something happened when I hit twenty or twenty-one. People in my class started to advance further than me. My professors noticed it. They urged me to practice harder, to go deeper. I tried. I was putting eleven, twelve, sometimes thirteen hours per day into it. But it just wasn’t happening for me. When I graduated, most of my classmates had job offers in London, Athens, Paris, and even Buenos Aires. I had an offer in Cincinnati, so I went because it was all I had. I lasted six months! I wasn’t good enough! But when I was there, I met another failing musician, a flutist, whom I later married. She got a job up here in Grand Rapids, so we moved together.”
Adam laughed to himself and spread his hands out in front of him. “That’s my dirty laundry. I’m a failed musician and a failed husband. How about you?”
Diana chuckled. “Dirty laundry? Do I have to get it out so fast?”
Adam blushed. “Should I be embarrassed that I showed you so quickly?”
“What! No. Of course not,” she said, her heart pounding. She gazed into his perfect blue eyes and wondered if this guy was for real. She swallowed. Should she tell him she hadn’t been out on a date in like six years? “Um. I was born in Poland?” she began, then laughed at herself. It sounded so silly and small.
Adam bobbed his head. “I heard the accent and wondered. It’s really cute.”
“Oh, gosh. I’m so embarrassed about it. I fought so hard to get rid of it when I was a kid. But when I moved here, I didn’t know a word of English.”
Adam looked rapt. “That sounds incredibly hard. No wonder your daughter is a genius! She gets it from you.”
Diana winced. “Oh, no. Not me. My mother was a genius. Or, she is, I mean.”
It looked like Adam wanted to probe deeper into that topic. But at that moment, they reached the restaurant and were seated on the terrace, where they ordered glasses of rosé and bathed in sunshine, raising their glasses to clink. The rest of the date went more or less wonderfully. They exchanged easy banter; they talked about Madeline’s piano teacher, whom Adam approved of; they talked about Adam’s current commitment to music—how he wanted to help children advance and appreciate music, now that he hardly played himself.
“Never?” Diana asked, brimming with adoration for him. “I find that hard to believe! After all those years of practicing?”
“I think I might be burned out,” Adam admitted. “Music was the only thing I knew for years. I think it’s good that I got out of the practice room and started living, you know?” He took a sip of wine. “Did you ever play an instrument?”
Diana remembered long afternoons at the piano. She remembered how her soul had opened up like a window. But she said, “No, I never did.”
“When did you figure out that Madeline was a prodigy?”
“She was three,” Diana said. “It was a total fluke.” She told the story of cleaning the Hamiltons’ house, of Madeline’s bravery, of how it had changed everything.
“That girl is going somewhere,” Adam said. “But she’s lucky to have you as a mother. You’re going to get her there.”
“I’m going to try,” Diana said.
Diana and Adam finished their date at eight fifteen, just in time for Diana to float off and pick Madeline up. Just before she did, Adam planted a kiss on her cheek and whispered, “See me again soon?”
Diana picked Madeline up and drove them to the grocery store, where she and Madeline skipped through the aisles to buy ice cream and diet soda—a rarity in their house—and paid at the cash register with a credit card that Diana would pay off later when she could. It was nearly nine when they got home, and Madeline was supposed to be in bed by then, but Diana let her stay up till ten, eating ice cream and watching television. Madeline looked surprised but very pleased. Diana felt as though she was levitating.
The following day, Diana worked at the bar at three in the afternoon. She left Madeline at the piano, telling her to come over to the bar as soon as she finished her four-hour practice. Diana knew that other five-year-olds could hardly sit still for thirty minutes, let alone four hours, but Madeline was a different sort of child, a genius. Diana could see the outline of her daughter through the window as she practiced arpeggio after arpeggio and memorized her next contest pieces. Diana poured beers and made afternoon cocktails and thought about Adam and what he might be up to.
To her surprise, when Diana got home from work at eight o’clock that night, Adam called to ask her out on another date. They arranged to meet the following Friday. This time, Diana hired a babysitter to pick Madeline up from her piano teacher’s and put her to bed. This time, Diana and Adam would go out a little bit later and maybe grab a drink afterward. This time, Diana would set the stage for something more intimate.
Diana and Adam went to a little French restaurant off the river. Adam drove, Diana wore her best dress, and Adam wore a pair of slacks and a black turtleneck that made him look much more like a classical musician. Diana thought she was going to swoon, but she kept it in check, ordering the cheapest food on the menu and the cheapest glass of red wine. Adam didn’t say anything about it, but Diana guessed he noticed and didn’t respect it. They clinked their glasses and immediately launched into another discussion—this time about what had gone wrong in Adam’s marriage. Adam wasn’t nervous to say.
“We were both so disappointed in how our careers had gone,” Adam explained, tearing at a piece of baguette. “We met each other and fell in love because we were commiserating, helping each other through our classical music trauma. But when we both moved on to our real careers, we didn’t really have anything else to talk about.”
Diana understood. “It was built on the bad times.”
“Exactly! We didn’t know how to have good times,” Adam said.
Diana had already drunk her first glass of wine, and Adam poured her another from his carafe—a far better red than she’d first ordered. All day, she’d been too nervous to eat, and her vision felt blurry, but she knew that Adam would drive later, so she decided to let herself ease into the night.
“Come on,” Adam said, “what about your ex? Madeline’s father?”
Diana’s cheeks were inflamed. When was the last time she’d talked about Allen?
“We never got married, thank goodness,” she said.
“That bad?”
Diana giggled and took a big gulp of wine.
“How did you meet? Give me something!” Adam said.
“He came into where I was working,” Diana said.
“Where was that?”
Diana knew that the diner sounded pathetic when compared to Adam and his ex-wife’s symphony orchestra in Cincinnati. But she didn’t want to build a new relationship on a batch of lies, so she said, “I was working at a restaurant. I was really young. My dad had just been diagnosed with cancer.”
Immediately after she said it, she felt as though she’d ripped herself open.
Adam’s face fell, and he looked down at his glass of wine nervously.
“I’m sorry,” Diana sputtered.
“No! No. I asked,” Adam said, trying to rebound. “What kind of cancer did he have?”
“Lung,” she said. “He always worked in terrible conditions. And he smoked. But everyone in Poland smoked.”
“Everyone used to smoke here in the States, too,” Adam said. “You go back to 1960, and pregnant women were smoking!”
Diana’s eyes bugged out. “I know. I can’t imagine it.”
Had her mother smoked when she was pregnant with Diana? It was the first time Diana had really thought about that. But, she supposed, things were different in Poland.
Was that why she wasn’t a good pianist?
Diana’s heart was beating too quickly. She steadied herself with her palms on the table.
“Times change quickly, I guess,” Adam said.
It felt as though Diana had pulled all the air out of their conversation. So she drank faster, trying to find that old spark. She talked in circles about her relationship with Allen, talking about his alcoholism and how little money they’d had. She thought, Adam wants me to open up. I can open up! That’s what dating is all about! But after Diana drank her third glass of wine, she realized she’d taken it too far. Adam couldn’t look her in the eye any longer. He was looking past her and hardly engaging with anything she said. Diana moved things around on her plate, unable to eat. She asked him a question about himself, something about where he lived in Grand Rapids, and she prayed that he would invite her over after this. She still wanted to sit on his sofa and kiss him. She still wanted to see what it would be like to live inside his life.
She wanted him to help her with Madeline’s career. She wanted him to love her.
But when the bill came, Adam paid and got up and said, “I’m beat!”
“Me too,” Diana said.
In reality, she’d never been more awake in her life.
When Adam dropped her off at her dilapidated house, Diana went upstairs to find Madeline already asleep in bed. She looked adorable and beautiful and serene. Diana sat at the edge of her daughter’s bed as tears spilled down her cheeks. She wondered what was wrong with her, then remembered that Madeline was very nearly perfect, which meant that something about Diana had to be okay.
But the next day, when Madeline messed around on the piano and didn’t practice as well or as hard as Diana felt was necessary, Diana heard herself screaming at her daughter. “Do you know what I put up with for you? For your piano? For your career?” Diana cried. “Get back to the bench and stay there until you have that piece memorized! Or else!”
Madeline limped back to the piano. Her sobs echoed through the house.
Scrubbing the kitchen counters and listening, knowing that Adam would never call again, Diana reminded herself it was all for Madeline. It was all for their future.
It had to be enough.