Free Good Things I Wish You by Manette Ansay

like smoke.
    “Should I say such things about my own mother, I believe they would arrest me, these Stasi religious American pigs.”
    “Um, yeah, but you have to take into account,” I said, recovering my footing, “the fact that Clara would have been used to men of all ages fancying themselves in love with her. I mean, she was a phenomenon. Das Wunderkind. Die erste Pianistin. The men were in love both with the music she made and with the way they could speak to her about her music. Almost as if she were not a woman.”
    “Different,” Hart said, lifting a finger, “than speaking to her as if she were a man.”
    “True.”
    “And none of these other admirers, even those of her own station, dared to address her as Du . Certainly she never used it. Except with Johannes.”

    “But this, too, can be explained,” I said. “There’s a quote from her diary where she says that an artist is not to be judged by age, but by intellect—”
    “And when I am with Brahms”— Hart provided the quote— “I never think of his youth, I only feel myself wonderfully stirred by his power and often instructed.” *
    “I wish I had your memory,” I said.
    “Don’t ever wish for that.”
    “But I forget everything.”
    His cell phone started up again.
    “And I,” he said, silencing it, “cannot forget anything. Even when I try.”
    Another church billboard: WHEN GOD SAYS NO, IT’S BECAUSE HE IS GOING TO SAY YES TO SOMETHING BETTER .
    What Hart said: “Such as Satan.”
    “You’re not married, are you?” I asked.
    He gave me an amused look. “At this particular moment in time? I am not.”
    “Do you think you’ll get married again?”
    He considered this. “Sure, sure. Probably. Won’t you?”
    “I would have to have a good reason.”
    It was the first time I’d heard him really laugh. “You did not have good reasons the first time? My, my.”
    I found myself laughing, too. “We thought it would be nice to get married,” I said. “So we did. That’s how young we were.”
    “It was the same with my second wife,” he said, andI was about to ask exactly how many wives there’d been when his cell phone bleated. A text this time.
    “Is there some kind of problem?” I asked.
    “It is Friederike’s mother. That woman will drive me crazy.”
    “What did you do?”
    “What did I do? Sure, you are a woman, so you assume I’ve done something wrong.”
    “Did you?”
    “I flew to London, where I saw my daughter, under the supervision of her teacher. I have spoken to my daughter, since, by phone. These are the recent crimes of which I stand accused. Friederike wishes to study in the U.S., as I have told you. At the Juilliard school. You have heard of the Juilliard school? She has been accepted there.”
    “Wow.”
    “It is not me putting such ideas in her head. Her teacher arranged the audition. Of course I do not disapprove.”
    “Her mother does?”
    “Lauren herself will never leave Paris. Have I mentioned she is recently engaged? To a man, I might add, who has as little understanding of Friederike’s gifts as Lauren herself. Both would be content for Friederike to remain at the conservatory for the next four years. Marry at twenty or twenty-two. Settle down, have a baby or two. Give up these foolish dreams of a concert career.”
    “All right, I’m sorry.”
    “No, no.” His mood had already settled into weary resignation; he seemed, all at once, like a much older man.“Lauren has her point. You know how it goes. The child is happy with how she lives. Then the father gets involved. After that, she and her mother are at odds.”
    I thought of Cal’s rule, one I’d come to admit made sense. When Heidi was with him, she might ask to call me, but I was not allowed to call her. The intrusion only upset her, disrupted her, interrupted the life he was trying to make for her there. Still, I didn’t know the answer to this: for Heidi, for Friederike, for anybody’s child.
    Hart and I rode in silence