Free Good Things I Wish You by Manette Ansay Page A

for a while, the absence of our daughters connecting us: as solid, as real, as any physical presence. Except that Heidi’s absence was only for the weekend, a total of four nights out of each month. Except that, for me, that absence offered a guilty relief, a gulp of fresh air I could only imagine as soon as I was back in our daily life together: getting her off to school, preparing her snacks and suppers, cajoling her through piano lessons, tucking her into bed. What I wouldn’t have given for a real stretch of time—not just a few weeks, but several months—to write the way I used to write. To immerse myself fully, completely. No need to come up for air every few hours, for hugs and kisses and story time, for fevers and board games, laundry and dishes, endlessly sticky countertops, endlessly sticky hands.
    “Don’t ever forget you are the lucky one,” Hart said, as if he’d been reading my thoughts. “Remember, you are the one with the child. He is the one without her.”

 

    When I am able to practice regularly, then I really feel totally in my element; it is as though an entirely different mood comes over me, lighter, freer, and everything seems happier and more gratifying. Music is, after all, a goodly portion of my life, and when it is missing, it seems to me all my physical and spiritual elasticity is gone.
    —Clara, in her diary, 1853 *
    We knew that in our mother woman and artist were indissolubly one, so that we could not say this belongs to one part of her and that to another. We would sometimes wonder whether our mother would miss us or music most if one of the two were taken away from her, and we could never decide.
    —Eugenie Schumann †

21.
    S HE’S ARRANGED FOR THE coach to arrive before dawn, while the children are still sleeping. Better this way, Clara tells herself. Awake, they’ll only cry and cling. Beg her to stay.
    Like Johannes.
    But what good can there be in sitting home when she might be performing, earning money for them all? Here she’s no use to anyone, dissolving into tears at a word from a friend, at a letter from the doctor, at the sight of the Rhine. Better for her to get back on the road. Better for the children to be left in the care of stronger minds, less tremulous hands. And now that they’re settled in the new Düsseldorf apartment—Johannes established in his own rooms below, keeping a daily eye on them—she can set off without fear. The housekeeper will take charge of the four youngest children until Ludwig and Ferdinand can be sent to school. Felix has been weaned, the wet nurse dismissed. The cook has decided to stay, thank goodness, and the new maid, though young, shows promise. Julie, always sickly, will be sent to her grandmother in Berlin.Marie will return to her Leipzig boarding school, along with Elise—though Elise is turning out badly: obstinate, unpleasant, indifferent. Hard not to fear for her future, for what kind of life can be in store for such a girl? Not un-pretty but certainly no beauty.
    No particular talent.
    Then again, what kind of life can be in store for any of them, now that Robert’s madness has been announced in newspapers as far-flung as America? Perhaps, the younger ones will show signs of his genius, but the oldest have disappointed her, she has to admit that this is the case, despite Marie’s sharp, diligent ear; her discipline; her steadiness of character. How fortunate that Johannes doesn’t mind the children’s many shortcomings, listening to their chatter without the least sign of impatience or exhaustion. He’s practically a child himself, entertaining them all with gymnastics and riddles, terrorizing them with the same monster games Robert once played with herself and her brothers.
    Chasing them around the Piano-Fabrik.
    Popping out— buh! —from behind closed doors.
    How often she thinks now of that long-ago life with her father in which nothing was required of her beyond what she most wanted to do. Fresh sheets of music