No More Piano Lessons
by
Barry Rachin
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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Published by:
Barry Rachin on Smashwords
No More Piano Lessons
Copyright © 2010 by Barry Rachin
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This short story represents a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Also by Barry Rachin:
• Canary in a Coal Mine
• A Waltz Yes, a Heart No
• A Trip to Tanglewood
• Just like Dostoyevsky
Muriel Beagle was an awful piano teacher. An abomination! Which is why, Allan Swanson blew a mental gasket when his ex-wife asked if he would shuttle their daughter, Ruthie, to her Thursday afternoon lessons from late April straight through until the end of school. It had been an amicable divorce. Lois, who was newly remarried, seldom bugged Allan when he fell behind with child support payments or his share of their daughter's expenses. The only thing she asked was that he pitched in for the kid's music lesson. Being a professional musician, a saxophonist on the wedding-bar mitzvah circuit, it seemed crass not to oblige. Thirty minutes - that's all Mrs. Beagle allotted per lesson, and most days she started late or was interrupted by one of her bratty kids bursting in unannounced. Lost time was never recouped on the back end of the lesson, and once, the music teacher even took a cell phone call and it wasn't an emergency. So unprofessional!
In the divorce agreement, Allan got shared custody. Ruthie, who turned twelve on the third of the month, visited weekends and slept over straight through to Monday mornings. One afternoon three weeks earlier, she was playing the Love Theme from Doctor Zhivago. Reaching the bridge, her fingers stumbled over an eighth-note run. "You left out a beat."
"No I didn't." The child’s tone was brusque and dismissive. "I played it just fine."
"No, look… When you started the ascending triplets -"
"I've played the tune exactly the same for Mrs. Beagle," Ruthie insisted, "and she never complained. Not once!"
Check. Checkmate. What could he say? The piano teacher gave lessons in a claustrophobically small den just off the kitchen. At the following lesson, Allan sat outside the door in an equally tiny vestibule as Ruthie played through the delicate waltz. When she reached the bridge where the melody modulated down a minor third, Ruthie dropped a whole note. He waited for Mrs. Beagle to cut her off, to point out the musical indiscretion. Nothing! Further along, Ruthie fingered the major seventh on a dominant arpeggio. Allan cringed inwardly. The teacher let the musical mayhem pass without comment. A major seventh in a dominant chord - Allan almost lost his lunch.
"She's coming along nicely don't you think?" The lesson was over and Mrs. Beagle was standing in the door way with her arm draped around his daughter's shoulder.
The artistically-challenged piano teacher was young, in her late thirties with three children. With her close-cropped, dirty brown hair and an overbite Muriel probably hadn't won any beauty contests since elementary school. And, even in the short time that Allen had known the woman, she had begun putting on weight. Fastforward ten years into the future, she would have added a sedentary pound or two annually until her girlish figure was little more than a fleeting memory.
And then there was the matter of Mrs. Beagle's voice. The words came in a nasally monotone that never varied, neither in pitch nor intensity. She talked through her nose in a grating, infuriating, mind-numbing drone that made most everything she said seem utterly irrelevant. There was no variation in the cadence. She didn’t bunch her words together in a rush of exuberance when enthusing over some bit of musical minutia. Drip. Drip. Drip. Twenty-four-seven, the words meandered along like water dripping from a leaky spigot. Chinese water torture!
Saturday afternoon, Allen played a wedding at the Foxhill Country Club. The piano player, Herb Calloway, was something of a musical celebrity having recently come off the road with the Woody Herman big band. “That lick you played on the last two measures of Misty,” Allan was addressing the piano player as they picked their way to the back of the room after finishing the first set. The bridal party and wedding guests had taken their seats as the main meal was being served. At the rear of the function hall a table had been arranged for band.
“The polytonal run?”
Allan laid a cloth napkin over his tuxedo pants and reached for a roll. “I was wondering if you could write it out for me.”
A waiter approached with a bronze pitcher and began filling water glasses. Herb grinned good-naturedly. Heavyset with a mop of curly brown hair, he was far and away the most accomplished musician in the band, having recorded with a number of big name performers. “Sure, before when we start the next set,” he promised. “It’s just a grouping of two-five progressions repeated in various keys." He spread a napkin across the front of his tuxedo pants. "It also works with symmetrical patterns... fourths and whole tones, pentatonics and altered diminished scales.” He took a sip of water and reached for a warm roll.