Your Mark on Me

The Party (III)

They had already pulled the piano from the back corner to the front of the banquet hall. I stepped towards it confidently, and adjusted the piano stool, aware of the burning stares of everyone in the room. I sat down and took in the crowd, my whole body tense with determination.

I saw Mark standing at the front; he smiled at me with his mouth, but his eyes stayed worried. He knew I hadn't been practicing lately and must have felt bad for putting me in this position.

Next to him, Jane smirked.

If she thought I was going to make a fool of myself, boy, she was wrong. I was going to show them all.

I wasn't good at words, at talking to people, or making a striking first impression, but I could speak through the piano.

I raised my hands and let them fall heavily into the long, fast and showy descending runs of Chopin's "Revolutionary Etude". As my my right hand mastered the sophisticated cross-rhythms and my left articulated the relentless semiquavers with accuracy, and perhaps greater speed than usual, I felt as if the sounds rolling out from out of my fingers were saying: "This is who I am. This is what I can do. I'm more than a quiet girl walking sheepishly by the arm of this man. I am worthy, and he's right to love me."

I started "La Campanella" without giving them enough time to clap. By the time I banged the keys in the finale, my fingers stretching and jumping to cover the two octave intervals, I almost forgot where I was. I hadn't played in ten days, and God, it felt good.

It felt as if a whole part of me that had been neglected, had just come back. I felt my emotions regaining balance and my recent frustrations getting exorcised through the tips of my fingers.

It was a strong, almost physical, sense of relief.

I lifted my arms dramatically on the final chord, and left them in the air, hanging, for a few good seconds before relaxing my body and registering the surroundings.

I was back in the hall, and they were all staring at me, but this time it was different. There was awe in their eyes, and there was respect.

That was the power of the piano, under my hands.

And it was real, for the few seconds in which they forgot about their masks, until they put back on their usual carelessness or their brittle smiles, ready to move on with their conversations in which no one listened and no one really cared about the answer, even if they were the ones who had posed the question.

Only Mark's smile stayed genuinely warm and proud, with a look in his eyes that was hard to describe. I smiled back at him — the only human in that room, possibly in the whole world, apart from my own mother, who truly cared about me. And he was the very reason I now dared to stand out and shine.

I got up for the clapping and bowed, announcing the ending of my ad-hoc recital, but in a fraction of second, I changed my mind. 

When the clapping died down, I sat back at the piano.

It wasn't showy as the other two, to the ears of the uninitiated. I didn't care that I was stretching it for too long. I ignored the quiet chattering of the people who didn't have the patience, or the heart to understand its subtleties. I wasn't playing for them.

I was only playing for him.

"Ondine", his favourite piece.

***

The string quartet resumed, and dinner was served. I sat with Mark, Jane and her husband, and Melissa, Jane's daughter, who seemed to be the only other teenager at the party.