The Reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt (18 page)

Would anyone, at this point, even care what I said?

But I had to try. And I was out of time.

For better or worse, in sickness or in health, till death do I fall apart, the reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt was about to reach its finale.

 

I had a piano lesson the morning of the talent show. Mr. Tate didn’t mention my upcoming performance. Even more surprisingly, he didn’t ask me to play the variation to start the lesson. He didn’t ask me to play anything at all. Instead, he wanted to show me something.

“I’m an old-fashioned fella,” Mr. Tate said, fiddling with a laptop computer, “and I can honestly say, Miss Kippah, I’d be happy enough if we were still using stone knives and bearskins to write things down. But every once in a while these computer machines get my attention. And an old student of mine sent something along that got my attention. Watch this.”

Mr. Tate hit a button and everything disappeared from his computer screen except for a painting of the composer Franz Liszt, his face wild and glowering.

“Whoops,” Mr. Tate said. He hit another button. Part of the score of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony appeared.

“I’m all turned around now,” he muttered. “I know it’s in here somewhere.”

He peeked around behind the computer, like part of whatever he was looking for might be hanging out of the back of the screen. He shook his head, and tapped the keys again.

“Well now, that’s better,” he said. “It’s our friend Mr. Kempff,” he told me. “Did you know these machines could work just like a television? I just press this triangle, here, and it goes. I have seen many things, but I have never seen this footage. This may be one of the last times Mr. Kempff was ever recorded playing. He must be seventy-five or eighty years old here.”

I scootched my chair closer to the computer and watched.

Kempff was beginning the slow, languid movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. As he played, he lifted his head and gazed off into the distance. His pale blue eyes were so intelligent, so soulful. As the camera lingered on his face, it was as if his playing were as much a part of him as his breathing. He seemed to give it barely any thought, only occasionally casting a quick glimpse at the keys. Otherwise it was as if the music had sent him far away and followed him there. His hands looked old. His face was wrinkled and mottled, his hair wispy and gray. He was no picture-perfect display of good looks, and yet his face while he played was one of the most wonderful things I’d ever seen.

Neither of us spoke until the entire video had played, through the brief second movement and the frantic explosion of the third.

“What a privilege,” Mr. Tate said, “to see an old master play Beethoven as if the music was the only thing keeping his world together. Not as fast as he played it in his prime, not as sharp. But I like this better. Everything he lived, all his experiences, is right there in the notes. Especially the ones he can’t make his fingers play anymore.”

We worked with my own Beethoven for the rest of the lesson, and I wondered how I would play the Moonlight Sonata in sixty or seventy years. I didn’t voice the thought to Mr. Tate, nor did I express any of the anxiety I felt about the evening’s performance.

And he, for whatever reason, didn’t ask.

 

By the time my name was called at the New Student Talent Show that evening, I had a serious case of nerves. And that was putting it mildly.

Everyone I knew, and everyone I didn’t, was in the audience. Spinky and Haven sat with me in the front row, quietly encouraging me, each in her own way. Reagan had not spoken to me in the days since my sea cow deception had come to light. Sage had given a few friendly waves across the dining hall, but she was clearly sticking with Reagan. I had seen absolutely nothing of Kate Southington. She could not have kept a lower profile had she been taken into the Witness Protection Program.

I couldn’t do it.

I had to do it.

Couldn’t.

Had to.

Spinky gently nudged me.

“They’re calling your name, Moxie from Biloxi,” she said, giving me a reassuring squeeze on the arm.

I had never felt this terrified before getting on a stage. Then again, I had never faced a performance like this one.

I got up, took a moment to make sure I wasn’t going to plummet to the floor in a dead faint, and made my way out of the row of seats and up the stairs to the stage.

“Hi. I’m Moxie Roosevelt Kipper.”

A sea of faces stared at me, rows and rows of blurry ovals, one indistinguishable from the next. I felt an uncomfortable silence peppered with a few snickers. A smattering of clapping came from Haven and Spinky’s direction, and from somewhere in the back. The auditorium was dim, and the lights onstage were bright. It took a moment for my eyes to focus. When they did, I thought I saw Luscious Luke in the third row. I shifted my gaze to the front row where I had been sitting, and spotted a familiar tuft of green hair. I focused on the green.

The microphone was set a little too high, and I had to readjust it to bring it closer to my mouth. This immediately made me think of Ms. Hay, which made me feel a tiny bit braver. I had to plunge in.

“I’m, um . . . Moxie Roosevelt,” I said, remembering with a flash of heat that I’d already covered that. My voice sounded too loud and too high over the PA system. I took a step back from the mike. Maybe too far. I leaned in. “I’m here because of . . . for two things.”

People started shouting that they couldn’t hear. I took a half step closer to the mike.

“I’m here for two things. For Self-Comedy Through . . . Oh, sorry. For Self-Comedy . . .

Someone groaned and turned it into a laugh. The laughter grew. I was already tanking. I sought out the tuft of green hair again, and could see that Spinky was clapping

“For my EE, Self-Confidence. Through Comedy. And for the music compartment. I’m also here for the music compartment.”

Silence.

“Department,” I corrected.

“Go Moxie!” Spinky called.

It had been a boisterous evening so far, with students shouting out various things, mostly supportive or humorous, as their classmates performed. Now I feared they were ready to roast someone.

“Yeah, go Moxie,” echoed someone else. “Away!”

My face burned. One day this whole experience will just be another wrinkle, I told myself, thinking of Wilhelm Kempff’s ancient, lined face. Just another wrinkle.

The program said that I was supposed to do my comedy piece first, and an unspecified piece on the piano at the end. My comedy outline was still folded up in my jeans pocket. But my hands were shaking so badly I wasn’t sure I could even hold on to it.

My eye went to the piano, sitting there like a lifeboat on the large stage. It was the only chance I had to sidestep this
Titanic
of a disaster.

A moment later I found myself dragging the mike stand with me toward the piano, creating a screeching feedback sound over the PA that made people groan again. I sat down at the piano and played a soft scale. My palms were sweaty, and I had to wipe them on my pants, which I’m sure everybody noticed. It was too late to care what people thought now. I began to play the piano for real. I started the Goldberg Variations at the very beginning.

The sound of the notes, and the familiar feeling of the keys beneath my fingertips, soothed me. My racing heart slowed just a little. I tried to block out every portion of my reality except for the music. Bach starts the whole series of pieces with just one melody, then he adds to it and changes it around and makes different things out of it. Each one is a different variation. And if a person didn’t know, they might never realize all the variations came from the same original theme. But they did.

My hands froze mid-note.

Oh my god.

This was . . . This was just what I’d done.

This was just like me.

I knew most of the Goldberg Variations inside and out. I had lived with them almost every day for over a year. How could it never have dawned on me? All that flailing around, all that trying on new personalities, layering them on top of each other. Over each other. Over
me
. I was like Bach’s variations. No—my
personalities
were like Bach’s variations, and I . . . I was the theme. I was all of it.

My head felt suddenly light as air, like it might float up and up and up to the stage lights.

I had never really gotten away from the music at all. I just didn’t realize it until I stopped playing the personality game. Until I stopped
playing
. My heart started rapidly thunk-thunking again, and I felt my face flush.

The key to plan B was right here, in Johann Sebastian Bach.

I was still sitting there with my hands frozen above the keyboard. The entire auditorium had fallen into utter silence, the kind that indicates mass realization that a 100 percent authentic disaster is about to unfold. But I hadn’t made a mistake. I had finally gotten it
right
. Like a bolt of lightning from the sky, I suddenly understood.

I bent the mike stand down close to my mouth, then picked up playing where I left off. When I was finished, I spoke.

“That’s how Bach opens the Goldberg Variations. With the melody he uses to build everything else on. The aria.”

“The disaster aria,” a voice called, and there was a burst of laughter followed by some shushing from various teachers standing against the wall. My stomach squeezed in on itself in a sickening spasm.

Just another wrinkle.

“That aria is the foundation that the thirty variations are built on. In the variations, sometimes you can still hear the aria, and sometimes they sound like totally different pieces. But they’re not. They’re all modifications of an original. Which brings me to an important point.”

Thankfully, no one could think of a wisecrack to shout here. I was immensely grateful for this small mercy. I pulled the mike a little closer.

“Some of you know, and hopefully some of you don’t know, that when I got to Eaton I decided to reinvent myself. I wanted to go from being a regular individually wrapped slice of American cheese to something much fancier. Something worthy of my crazy name. Something imported, say, maybe in the Stilton family.”

Now there was dead silence. I’m sure that no matter what these people were expecting, they weren’t expecting me to tackle my personality issue openly, or compare it to cheese. I plowed ahead.

“My first big mistake in a series of spectacular mistakes was thinking it was possible to change the way people see you. You can’t. Kind of like Bach can’t control whether you like his aria or not.”

I played the tune of the aria again.

“So let’s say this is the personality I arrived with at Eaton. We’ll call it, as one of you so aptly pointed out, my disaster aria.”

There were a few chuckles.

“And that’s where the first variation of Moxie comes in. My roommate has green hair and an eyebrow ring, right? In reality she’s a total sweetheart, but she looks really tough. And I wanted to be just like her. So I went for Detached, Unique, and Coolly Knowing Moxie. Code name: DUCKI. And let’s say for the sake of argument, it sounded something like this.”

I took a deep breath and flexed my fingers before beginning Variation 1. Unlike the aria, this piece was fast and tricky. The right hand is nonstop melody going all over the place, and the left hand is making these logical but potentially lethal jumps from key to key at different intervals. It’s short, but it takes a lot out of me. I got through it with only a few fudges. I got more applause. People like the fast, technical stuff.

“Yeah. So that’s totally different, right? It’s flashy and unique, and it gets your attention. But it’s still something created out of the core aria. When I play something this technical, it sounds much more complicated than it is. It’s just the tempo that’s jacked up, really. The rest is just hours in the practice room. I finally get most of them right. Everything is DUCKI.”

There were a few more laughs at this. I might have won a small handful of them over, but it didn’t even matter. Whether they were with me or against me, I was going to say what I had to say.

“Then I met this other girl. She’s completely different from my roommate, but she’s really cool. For starters, she’s a Buddhist, and she knows a lot about meditation and calming the mind. She’s an amazing person, and I wanted to be like her too. Before I knew it, I had become Mysterious Earth Goddess Moxie. Code name: MEG. And in the process of becoming a MEG, I started saying things about myself that weren’t really accurate. I
wanted
them to be true. I wanted to chant, and be a vegetarian, and have a guru. But the fact is, they
weren’t
true. I was making them up. I couldn’t be farther from DUCKI at this point. I wanted to be full-on MEG. And let’s say the musical version of that sounds something like this.”

I begin to play Variation 15, which had become one of my favorites. It’s quiet and emotional, and sometimes I feel like it comes off as more human than some of the other variations. I wait when I’m finished, because people seem determined to clap after each one.

“So it’s beautiful, right? Really different from 1 though. This one seems to tell a story, and I find it really spiritual and dreamlike. Really contemplative and sweet. If the Goldberg Variations were religious, I’m sure that Variation 15 would be a Buddhist.”

A little more laughter. They weren’t rolling in the aisles, but they weren’t throwing tomatoes either. And they were attentive when I was playing. You can always tell when an audience is listening. This one was.

“So you can probably see where I’m going with this. I met a third girl who I liked a whole lot. She’s an activist, actually. Not the kind who makes a five-dollar donation and wears a Greenpeace button on her jacket for three years. This girl is the real thing. She’s committed. She takes action. She’s incredible. Now, when I talk to this girl, I’m blown away. She’s got petitions and articles. She’s got plans. She’s going to save the animals, and I realize I’ve always wanted to save them too. New Variation. I’m Assertive Revolutionary Activist Moxie. Code name: ARA.”