The Reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt (6 page)

“No hurry,” Spinky said. “But they’re supposed to post the EE lists on the hall bulletin board during dinner, and I want to make sure I got into Green You. I was the first one to sign up, so I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

“That’s so funny, I signed up for that too, and so did someone else from our hall,” I said. “Haven—I think you already know her, right?”

“Haven the Buddhist,” Spinky said. “She’s awesome.”

“Isn’t she totally? Well anyway, there was a rush on the signup sheets by the time I got there. I was so scared I’d get stuck in the Tao of Dance,” I declared, and added a relieved chuckle.

“Really? I thought that one sounded good,” Spinky said, plucking a piece of pasta salad off my plate and popping it into her mouth with her fingers.

“Oh. I’m just not very good on my feet,” I said, recovering fast. I was confused. What could be less DUCKI than the Tao of Dance? And yet Spinky was undeniably the poster girl of DUCKIs. “Hey listen, a girl stopped by to see you this afternoon,” I said, changing the subject. “A friend of yours from back home or something? Name was Kate.”

Spinky looked at me blankly.

“Strawberry blond hair? On the tall side? Kind of bony?”

“And she said she was from Oregon?” Spinky asked, looking genuinely confused.

“Well, no, not exactly. She said she knew you from before. Oh, Southington.That was her last name. Kate Southington.”

Spinky’s face remained blank. Then her eyebrows shot up in tandem.

“Okay, I remember now. I
have
met her before—at an incoming new students reception last year. I was on campus because it was my mother’s thirtieth Eaton reunion. We hung out a little.”

So they weren’t besties from back home. I felt a happy tide of relief. I started to ask another question, but Spinky interrupted me.

“No rush, but are you done eating yet?”

For Spinky, anything.

“I’m done,” I said.

We bused our trays and headed through the foyer. Without thinking, I gave the big oil painting a cheerful wave.

“See somebody you know?” Spinky said, glancing back in the direction I’d waved.

I blushed. This was one of those times when honesty seemed like the best policy, be it DUCKI or not.

“I was waving at Auntie Sparkles,” I admitted, pointing to the painting of the dour, doily-headed woman.

Spinky looked from the painting to me, and burst out laughing.

“Oh my gosh, that is hysterical! I’m with you, Mox. From now on Amelia Eaton is officially Auntie Sparkles.”

We trudged up the stairs still laughing. I suppose somewhere Amelia Eaton was turning over in her grave, but what the heck. I’d made Spinky Spanger laugh.

When we reached our hall, we were just in time to see Kristen tacking a paper to the bulletin board.

“Bet that’s it,” Spinky said. She linked her arm in mine, and we walked over to the bulletin board as Kristen retreated down the hall.

The list was typed in alphabetical order.

“Yay, Green You! I’m in,” Spinky said. “Where are you— Oh my god, I’ve forgotten your last name! I’ve got new student dementia. Didn’t you say you signed up for Green You, Mox?”

I was staring at the list, my mind suddenly blank. Actually, not blank. No. Filled with panic, confusion, and horror. Because I
did
see my name.

I had been enrolled in Self-Confidence Through Comedy: Releasing Your Inner Stand-Up.

“It’s a mistake,” I said.

Spinky was running her finger down the list.

“There you are. The only Moxie at Eaton, I’ll bet. Self-Confidence Through Comedy?”

“It’s a horrible mistake. What am I going to do? It’s a nightmare!”

Spinky turned her round, cheerful face toward me. She was wearing earrings shaped like little televisions and one of them was falling out.

“I think it’s great for you, Mox. I think it’s perfect.”

Perfect? I reached over and fixed Spinky’s earring. Perfect because I seemed to need self-confidence?

Spinky turned and headed for our room. I followed after her limply.

“They’re going to have to let me switch to Green You,” I said as we walked in. “I will fight the administration if I have to.”

Spinky had stopped in the middle of the floor. “Do we need curtains for this center room?” she asked.

“I mean, they have to let me, right? They can’t just do that to me. It’s their mistake—a clerical error.”

Spinky turned around and looked at me like she was surprised I was still behind her.

“Do what to you?” she asked. She lifted her shirt while she stood there and scratched her ribs with two blue fingernails, revealing a pleasantly rounded Buddha belly.

“Make me be in an EE I didn’t sign up for and humiliate me!”

Spinky scratched a bit more, then shrugged.

“If you want to change, just ask the teacher assigned to your EE during orientation,” Spinky said. “The worst that can happen is she’ll say no. But I don’t get why you would feel humiliated.”

“Because of the class!” I declared. “Self-Confidence Through Comedy?”

Spinky waited for more.

“Release your Inner Stand-Up?” I threw up my hands. “It’s ridiculous. I mean, the whole idea is so pathetic.”

Spinky spied something on the window ledge and grabbed it. It was a roll of duct tape.

“There it is! I promised Haven I’d rig a sling and weight for her incense burner with this. Don’t worry too much, Mox. It’s not as bad as you think.”

Spinky was out the door without another word. Had I not already heard Haven telling me about Spinky’s plans for the incense burner, I would have been certain my roommate was blowing me off with a very bizarre excuse.

I wandered into my room, found my sheets and comforter in one of my boxes, and made my bed. Now I had to lie in it.

It wasn’t until I pulled my soft comforter up under my chin that I realized how exhausted I actually was.

I was well on my way into a deep sleep when, like a dream, Kate Southington’s face flashed in my mind’s eye. And this time I was absolutely sure that I knew her.

Before I had a chance to figure out how, I was fast asleep.

My
first meeting with Mr. Tate was the next morning, and I got to his office ten minutes early. Miss Nimetz, my Pine Point piano teacher for the last four years, was a great musician but sort of stodgy and grim. Mr. Tate had seemed, during our admissions meeting, to have tumbled out of a Southern novel filled with eccentric and unintentionally hilarious characters. I was fervently hoping that my first impression of him was correct, and that my piano lessons were about to get a lot more lively.

I sat down to wait for him on a wooden bench outside his office, and absentmindedly practiced fingering my scales using my algebra textbook as a keyboard. It seemed more useful than actually opening it, which had been my original, uncharacteristically ambitious plan.

Mr. Tate arrived precisely at 9:00 a.m., striding down the hall in a green mock turtleneck sweater, perfectly pressed jeans, and a pair of white Converse high-tops. His face was creased, his hair wild and silver, and his eyes a lively blue. He had the thickest and whitest eyebrows I’d ever seen.

“Moxie Roosevelt Kippah,” he said in a deep, rumbly voice liberally tinged with a Southern accent. “Good aftahnoon. No, wait a minute.”

He checked his watch.

“Pahdon me. Good mawnin’.”

“Good morning,” I replied, unable to stop myself from breaking into a huge smile. One lock of his hair was standing straight up on his head, like an exclamation mark.

Mr. Tate unlocked his office door and ushered me in. Most of the room was taken up by a baby grand piano. By the window was a small desk in front of a bookshelf crammed with music and books. The office was like Mr. Tate himself, partly tidy, partly all over the place.

He sat down behind his desk and indicated a wooden chair with a nod of his head.

“Take a seat, Miss Kippah. It’s not very comfortable, I’m afraid, but some people have a tendency to fall asleep when I talk to them, and I’ve got to fight back where I can.”

I already knew that nothing in the world could make me fall asleep while Mr. Tate was talking. The chair
was
hard, though.

“Settlin’ in, are you?” he asked, and I nodded.

“Really well, thanks,” I replied.

“Well, good. I am very glad to have you here.”

He pronounced the last word in two syllables—“heah.”

“Would you like to start us off, Miss Kippah?”

“Start us off?”

“Play something,”

Duh. Of course that’s what he meant.

I took a seat at the piano, played a few scales, then launched directly into the opening of the Goldberg Variations. I lost my self-consciousness within a few lines, then lost sight of the room, and eventually lost sight Mr. Tate himself, as Bach temporarily eclipsed my world. I played straight through the first ten variations, skipping only number 3, since it tripped me up a little sometimes. I wanted to be perfect for Mr. Tate in our first session.

I glanced over at him when I finished, trying not to look too eager. If he’d noticed my skipping Variation 3—and I’m sure he had—he didn’t point it out. Instead, he sat back in his chair and put his hands on his knees. Then he looked at me, both eyebrows drawn together in a tufty white V.

“You are a gifted pianist, Miss Kippah, but”—he paused—“more than that, you have music in your bones.”

I felt my heart unclench and the blood rush happily into my face.

“I can always tell right away which ones are being pushed by their folks,” he continued, “and which ones are doing it because the music is who they are. It comes through in every note you play, young lady, and that is the difference between an amateur and the real thing. You are the real thing. But you know that already.”

Wow. Miss Nimetz forked out maybe one or two compliments in a year. I could get used to this.

“Well, I know I still have a lot of work to do,” I said modestly, trying to eat my smile.

“Hope that you always will,” he replied, running a hand through his hair, which produced an effect like a silver Mohawk. “When the day comes that you don’t think you have any more work to do, when you think you’re good enough and you’ve learned it all and you’ve become the pianist you intend to be for the rest of your life, that is the day you ought to stop playing. Do you enjoy Wilhelm Kempff?”

“Oh, yes, definitely,” I said. “He’s one of my favorite pianists—I have every single recording of his Beethoven sonatas.”

“Yes, I understand they’ve put them on those little coaster-shaped things now.”

“CDs,” I said helpfully.

“That’s right. I prefer records myself. Now, if you listen carefully, and follow along in a score, you can hear a mistake every now and again. And I’m sure you know that Kempff played into his eighties—with arthritis—and he made more mistakes then. Ones he didn’t make as a younger man. And I’ll tell you, Miss Kippah, I would rather hear Wilhelm Kempff’s mistakes than I would most people’s note-perfect renditions. Because he plays from the soul. And the soul of an artist is far more important than some silly notion of perfection.”

I knew exactly what he meant. I had just never heard anyone express it so perfectly before.

“And that brings us back to you. Your Goldberg Variations are very solid. You understand Bach—you can transcend the math and logic of his music and communicate the
feeling
in it. Have you worked on all thirty of the variations?

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, mostly. I’ve worked to some extent on all of them. Well, except for Variation 28.”

“Ah, yes. The iceberg to the
Titanic
of many a hopeful virtuoso. Why haven’t you tackled Variation 28?”

I hesitated. Mr. Tate’s eyes gleamed as he sat back in his chair, folded his hands neatly over his stomach, and waited for my response.

“I guess I think . . . I don’t know. I guess I just think it’s for a more advanced student.”

“And you’re not an advanced student?” he asked.

“I . . . well, yes, I am. But I also think it’s okay to know that there are some things that are still out of my reach. Rachmaninoff. Liszt.”

He gave a little smile.

“Possibly. Possibly not. But we’re talking about Bach.”

“I guess I feel like it would be wrong to take it on if I don’t have the capacity to play it as it’s meant to be played. If you listen to Glenn Gould—”

Mr. Tate sat bolt upright. His hair bounced a few times, then settled.

“Glenn Gould, Miss Kippah, played almost nothing the way the composer meant it to be played. Glenn Gould was a genius of the highest caliber, and maybe the most important thing to happen to the Goldberg Variations in the twentieth century, but he’s scared many a pianist away from them because of the way he played, crazy fast here, turtle slow there. His renditions of Bach are utterly unique and will never be equaled. Nor should they be. But I am more interested in Moxie Roosevelt Kippah than Glenn Gould.”

Wow. Miss Nimetz would have lay down and died on her living room rug before ever saying something like that.

“We’re collaborating, you and I,” Mr. Tate said. “So what we’re going to work on together has to be agreeable to both of us. But here’s what I’d like, Miss Kippah. I’d like to see you tackle Variation 28. And to do that, you have to leave the comfort of those ten pieces you play perfectly and be willing to get messy. Be comfortable with the sound of your own struggle as you try to work it out, even if it sounds like you’re practicing with mittens on. Let it be a work in progress. The only way you’re going to learn how to play it is to learn how
not
to play it first. The rest, Miss Kippah, is a simple process of elimination.”

He folded his hands again and sat back, looking at me under slightly raised, huge white eyebrows.