Free A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles Page B

upraised fist, as if it is the neck of a despised fowl. “ Altruism , they say, democratic principles , they say, a helping hand to the Cuban patriot —”
    “Hypocrisy is the worst sin, Daddy, as you’ve told me a thousand—”
    “Lies! All lies! They’ll be gobbling up territories like darkies at a fish fry!” With a final, indignant thwack he stomps back into his study.
    Miss Loretta is not certain whether she is amused by his outbursts after these many years, or only relieved that she is no longer their object. His political views and his insistence on not being “run off his patch” no doubt limited her prospects for marriage when she was of a desirable age, her fate sealed by her own—acquiescence? Cowardice? A widow with an inheritance might hope for suitors at forty, but a woman never married at that same age is past consideration.
    “My apologies,” she says to Jessie, but the girl has only turned back to face the piano and execute the tumbling descent that ends the piece. It is very sweet of her, really, to choose the old-maid daughter of the city’s most eccentric landowner not only as a music instructor but as a confidant.
    “I believe I’d give anything to be your age again,” Miss Loretta muses out loud. “With a young soldier to pine for. Heartsick, yet eternally hopeful—”
    “Did you ever—?” Jessie begins, and then falters on the very last note, as if realizing she may have overstepped her position.
    “Ever what?” Miss Loretta asks her, gently. “Have I ever pined for somebody?”
    The girl lowers her eyes, does not turn to look at her. She plays simple, thoughtful chords for a moment. “Did you?”
    “Yes,” Miss Loretta says to the colored girl.
    “And—?”
    “It went a good deal beyond the pining stage, I’m afraid, but he was—unsuitable.”
    Jessie nods sympathetically, as if she understands, as if she can know anything about it. “He was poor?”
    Miss Loretta gives her a tight smile. “He was married.”
    It is evident that the girl is shocked, looking at the keys now as if they may have been suddenly rearranged.
    “Daddy attempted to shoot him on two occasions.”
    She wonders what they think of her around town, what they say about her. After little Carrie’s success at Fisk her services have been in demand, by colored and by white alike, and many of those same men who will not speak to her father are willing to pay to send their daughters into his home for lessons. A strange old bird, she imagines. A spinster eccentric whose constant and public efforts to gain suffrage are regarded as yet another deleterious effect of remaining without husband or child.
    But Jessie Lunceford is too sweet-natured to mock or condemn her, and Miss Loretta is surprised to find herself not in the least embarrassed to have shared an intimation of her deepest regret with a student. A colored girl.
    “Shall we try the Twenty-Three?”
    It is the ballade they have been working on, the one she has suggested for Jessie’s Academy audition and thus the locus of some anxiety, but today Miss Loretta only turns the pages when needed and allows her thoughts to drift on the music. The girl wears her hair in short braids that reveal the beautiful back of her neck, wears no ring on her long brown fingers, wears no disappointment, no sense of things that will never be. When she talks of her crush on the soldier and the impediment of her father’s propriety the tiniest of vertical lines appears between Jessie’s wide-set brows, her mouth turned down in the tiniest of frowns, like a seamstress concentrating to pass thread through a needle. How can anyone so untroubled understand the emotion of the music? Leland had a theory that the masters were only vessels, that the spirits of the great composers, or perhaps God Himself, was speaking through them. He would stroke her fingers, dreamily, as he spoke to her of his spiritual ideas, after they had been making love. She understands about the