“Yeah? So how come there are no joyous songs about menopause? You wait. You’ll play a different tune then.” Lou sighed, then started to move his fingers over the keys as if to play. Sylvie was sure that he was going to do a bit better when, instead, he fisted his hands and began to pound the piano keys.
Gently but firmly, Sylvie lifted his hands off her precious Steinway and closed the lid. “Lou, have you thought of taking a trip?” Sylvie asked, rubbing his shoulder.
“I’m too old,” Lou said. “And besides, who wants to die on a strange mattress?” He sat, immobile. Sylvie moved back to the window. Without even trying to talk him out of his stupor, she watched the activity brewing in her backyard. After a time Lou opened the piano, began to play, and caught the melody of the song for a moment. Sylvie thought of Bob. He didn’t send her flowers anymore either, she thought, and leaned up against the door frame.
The classical piece, a Schubert sonata, was being played far too quickly. Sylvie winced, but continued looking through the French doors. Now there was a crane poolside, along with a milling crowd of cameramen setting up for some kind of shoot. Would her drowned car make the local news? Sylvie turned away and looked back at her twelve-year-old music pupil, who was playing frantically. Too much Ritalin.
“Slow down. It isn’t a race, Jennifer.” Jennifer looked up. You could see that though she tried to hide it, she was totally crushed by even this slight criticism . Jennifer already excelled at gymnastics and tennis, and was the leader of the girls’ swim team. No wonder she rushed. She had a lot to do, and she tried to do it all perfectly.
Sylvie focused on the girl, leaving the growing pageant at the window and putting her hand on the girl’s shoulder, trying to gently explain. “Play it as if you were falling in love for the first time,” Sylvie suggested and sat down at the piano. She played the Schubert dreamily, and the yearning and romance of the piece came through. Sylvie herself fell under the sonata’s spell. “Feel it, Jennifer.”
“I don’t know what that love stuff feels like.” Jennifer sat, as solid as a packed laundry sack.
“You will,” Sylvie told her reassuringly. Looking at Jennifer’s doubting face, she continued: “Love heightens the senses and makes you do things that are so surprising,” she lowered her voice, “and feel so-o-o good. You’ll be amazed. But you have to go slow then too.” Then, as if she were waking up from a dream, Sylvie realized how inappropriate she was being. To cover her slip she smiled brightly, a teacher-to-pupil face. “Don’t worry, Jennifer, you’ll feel it after your first kiss.” Sylvie got up from the piano and went to look out the window again at the activity around the pool. “Try it again,” she encouraged.
“I’ve already been kissed, like, three times,” Jennifer told her, still defensive. Then she began playing the piece again, almost as maniacally as before.
Sylvie turned back to her. “Maybe you just need a better kisser,” she suggested. Jennifer giggled, perked up, and actually slowed down. Good. Poor kid. Sylvie wanted her students to enjoy their lessons, and Jennifer had talent. She just needed the capacity to enjoy it. The girl finished the piece and Sylvie made it a point to praise her. Meanwhile, when she glanced back, her backyard had become even more of a circus.
“Come over here and take a look,” Sylvie told the girl. Jennifer and Sylvie both peered out the window. The crane, tearing the hell out of the lawn, was poolside. Men with hard hats were gesturing, one of them obscenely. “How did your car get in there?” Jennifer asked, sounding awed.
“I don’t know. Maybe it wanted one more swim before winter.”
Jennifer giggled, until her mother, Mrs. Miller, appeared on the walk outside the French doors and stepped in to join them. She was the kind of suburban matron who not only had to have her children do everything, but always had to know everything herself. “Sorry I’m a little late,” she apologized, but it didn’t sound like she was sorry. “There’s a lot of confusion in your driveway. How did the lesson go?” she asked brightly.
Jennifer tore her eyes off the crane and looked up at her mother. “She told me I had to get kissed better. Like, maybe with tongues.”
Mrs. Miller opened her eyes wide and turned to Sylvie. Great, Sylvie thought. She shook her head. “No, Jennifer, I did not say that. I didn’t give specifics,” Sylvie reassured Mrs. Miller. “We were talking about tempo, actually.” She raised her brows and lowered her voice. “I’d also suggest you monitor her television.” Jennifer’s mother, pacified, took her daughter by the arm and left.
Sylvie walked out into her yard. People were all over. Phil was yelling at a guy with a video camera. She felt as if it were some kind of foreign film and she was in it. “What is all this?” she asked her brother.
“We’re shooting today’s commercial here.”
“Here? In my yard?”
“Yeah. I rerouted the crew. We’d been scheduled to shoot one on the lot, but this is better. Now we’re just waiting for Bob to get ready.” Phil laughed and looked over toward the garage, where Sylvie was surprised to see her husband having his hair combed by a woman. “He’s becoming the Harrison Ford of car ads,” Phil smirked. He looked back at her. “It’s a hell of a thing to do to a Z2,” he told her. “But Pop thinks it’s a stroke of luck that you couldn’t control yourself. Women drivers.” Phil shook his head again.
Then Bob approached. Sylvie just looked up at him and his professionally combed hair. He smiled back sheepishly. “Hey, Bob, you—” Phil began but, klutzy as always, he tripped over a cable, then looked around to see who he could blame it on. Of course, Sylvie saw, he noticed the only woman on the crew, a pretty woman with freckles and auburn hair. “Hey! Red! Is this the way you hope to get a good-looking guy?” he shouted. “Try taking out a personal ad.” Sylvie cringed. Phil peered at Bob. “Makeup! We need makeup.” The woman Phil had just dissed picked up her makeup box and moved toward them.
“Well, I’m sure she’ll do a great job now,” Bob said to Phil, smiling again at Sylvie. She said nothing, just moved away as Bob was prepped and fussed over.
“Okay, okay, listen up. A star is born,” Phil yelled to the crew.
My brother is an ass, Sylvie thought. She watched as Phil hunkered down to talk to Bob. “You know what we need here. The usual bullshit. Sincerity until it hurts.” Phil paused in his directorial overdrive. He’d obviously seen what Sylvie just had—Rosalie’s face popping up over the fence. “Get that head down out of the shot or we’re going back to court!” he shouted.
Rosalie disappeared. Poor Rosalie. She’d always been loud and insensitive, but no woman deserved Phil. Sylvie looked back at Bob, who’d been powdered down and was now being led to his mark. Phil handed him the script. Bob was used to doing all this, but he looked nervous. Sylvie watched him. Somehow, he looked different. It wasn’t just the makeup. She approached him.
“Sylvie, I know that you—” Bob began.
From behind, Phil interrupted. “Got your lines down?” he asked.
Bob gestured toward the script. “I don’t think it’s—”
Phil, the half-pint Quentin Tarantino, was in his glory. When they were shooting a commercial, he got himself confused with an auteur. “Come on. No temperament,” he said to Bob. “And people: let’s get this the first time or die,” he called out. Sylvie saw one of the crew members roll his eyes. She blushed for her brother. Meanwhile, Bob turned to the camera.
Was this, then, all the attention she got after doing something as crazed, as outrageous, as dunking her car like a doughnut? Had Bob, before he’d even spoken to her, before he’d had a chance to … before she’d had a chance to—well, to talk—digested this bold act of hers? Had he processed it in his own way, turned it to his advantage and already