Your Mark on Me

Chapter 18: Hourglass

February came. The book was two thirds written. I was going to Mrs Jackson three, four times a week now, and the chills of anxiety were creeping up at the thought of the competition now only a month away.

My repertoire for both rounds had already been decided and memorised: Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Liszt and Ravel. I had the pieces in my fingers already, but, while I'd managed to master the technical challenges and the double-note passages, both the Ondine and Le Gibet from Gaspard de la nuit were giving me a hard time in achieving the right phrasing and the right tone, that perfect balance between clarity and delicacy. The third part of Ravel's suite, Scarbo had to be put aside for another occasion: I could play it, but not with confidence.

Of everything I played, Ondine was Mark's favourite. When I practiced it, he'd always listen with a dreamy expression and I couldn't help but think of myself as the water nymph Undine, trying to seduce the man watching her.

He'd been cooler lately. We still chatted, but not as much as before. He wasn't ruffling my hair anymore or calling me his little anything — he must have realised how, after my confession, those things were making me uncomfortable.

Three weekends in a row he was out of town. I didn't ask.

Since the competition was coming up, and I kept complaining about my old piano and the out of tune ones at school, Mark gave me a copy of his house key. Now, whenever he was away, I could come and practice on his piano. I would have been happier about his gesture if he wasn't gone so much.

When I wasn't practicing or doing homework, I started typing his manuscript onto the computer. I wanted to feel needed and useful, but, after the completion of the book, I couldn't think of what else he'd need me for.

On the last weekend of February, Mark invited me to a concert.

"I want you to meet a friend of mine", he said. "She's playing at the Kennedy Center on Sunday."

The friend's name was Jenny Adams and she was a pianist, like me — only with twenty more years of experience and practice. I was surprised when Mark said they were the same age; just like him, she looked at least ten years younger.

On stage, she looked incredibly elegant in her long black gown with a naked back. I watched and listened wide-eyed, as she pounded the keys on the climax of Rachmaninoff's No. 2 in C minor against the uplifting accompaniment of the orchestra, thinking how I wished that one day, I'd be just like her.

After the concert, we went backstage to her dressing room.

"Jenny teaches at the Juilliard", Mark said after our introduction. My admiration for her couldn't have grown higher.

I offered her my sincere congratulations for the night's performance and she smiled, dismissing my compliment with a weak wave of her short-nailed, perfectly manicured fingers.

"I heard you're quite a talented young lady yourself", she said in an accent very similar to the way he spoke. "Mark has been telling me about you."

I thought it was interesting how he'd never spoken to me about her before.

"Well then", he intervened, "we shall let you get changed. We can chat more in a minute, when I take you both for dinner."

When we drove to the restaurant, she sat at the front and I was in the backseat. I wasn't used to being in the backseat, not when Mark was driving.

I felt small and underdressed while walking inside the fancy restaurant, unable not to notice Jenny's slender silhouette in her high waisted black pencil skirt and crepe frill blazer, and the way she walked on her stiletto shoes like she'd been born wearing them.