Free Fearless by Shira Glassman

Fearless
    by Shira Glassman
     
    Thanks for being at all my All-State rehearsals, Mom,
and for constantly exposing me to both classical music and fiddle
tunes throughout my life.
     
    A newly out-of-the-closet band mom falls for a cute
butch orchestra teacher while snowed in at All-State.
     
    ***
     
    Robin’s clarinet solo was
startlingly beautiful as it drizzled through the hotel ballroom
like maple syrup on pancakes. Anyone who had a few bars rest or
whole notes turned to look at the skinny brunette—the other teens
were clearly impressed. Even the Ricardo Montalb á n look-alike conductor lifted his
eyebrow to her and smiled.
    From the glow on her face, Robin knew she’d
knocked it out of the park. When the flute finally took the melody
from her, she collapsed back into the folding chair and beamed
toward the far side of the room.
    Lana swelled with pride and
gave her daughter a double thumbs-up in response, then held up her
phone to mean I got it on video! A few more keystrokes and it was up on
Facebook— At All-State orchestra rehearsal, check out Robin’s solo! So
proud of my amazing kid.
    She was damn good. The rest of these kids
were good too, of course—the best in the state. The last time Lana
had played her violin was the mid-’90s, but she still had an ear
for pitch, and it was a pleasure to be around high schoolers who
knew where the notes were.
    Robin and her friends had more solos coming
up, so Lana flung her phone back into her purse and sat back to
listen. Hey, the oboe player was pretty good, too!
    The conductor stopped the
group with a swipe of his left hand. “This is very good, I just
would like a little more, look at me, so I can play with tempo, okay? Yaaa daaa
da daaaa daaaa daaaaa… ”
    He let them finish the movement before
calling a ten-minute break. Robin was ensconced in the middle of
her band friends, talking animatedly, so Lana took her phone back
out to check if anyone had said anything nice about the video yet.
She wanted the whole world to be as dazzled by her kid as she
was.
    “Hey, you’re Robin Novak’s mother,
right?”
    Lana looked up and saw a familiar-looking
woman wearing flannel and well-fitting jeans. She was a youthful
fortyish with cropped black hair and heavy-rimmed glasses, and she
was smiling invitingly.
    Lana, out of the closet less than a year,
fumbled the phone so hard that it flipped like a gymnast before
landing on the floor between them. “Shit,” she giggled, feeling
fifteen instead of forty-three. Sure, there were plenty of straight
women with short hair, but she was fairly sure this wasn’t one of
them.
    The woman bent down to pick up Lana’s phone
just as Lana did, and their hands brushed. “It’s not broken, is
it?”
    “Nah, these rubber cases… Yes, I’m Robin’s
mom; I’m Lana. I’m sorry, you look familiar but I can’t…?”
    “Melanie Feinberg,” said the woman. “Call me
Mel. I conduct the string orchestra and chorus at Tulip Tree
High.”
    “Oh! Okay, yeah.”
    “She’s really got it,” said
Mel. “Rafael said she’s looking at going professional, right?”
Rafael Vargas was
the band director at Tulip Tree, and Robin’s favorite
teacher.
    “Yeah, we’ve got audition trips planned for
Julliard, Eastman, and Curtis,” said Lana.
    “I just can’t get over that mature tone,”
Mel continued. “But, of course, all these kids are great. That’s
how they got into the top group.”
    “You have students here, too, right?”
    “Yup!” Mel’s face crinkled into a big grin
as she pointed to two kids Lana recognized from the violin section.
“They’re mine, and so’s the assistant principal cellist.”
    “That’s great! Congratulations!”
    “I also have a violinist and a violist in
the ninth- and tenth-grade group,” said Mel proudly. “We had a good
year.”
    “I’m really enjoying these rehearsals,” said
Lana. “It’s so nice to be around violins again. I go to all Robin’s
concerts, but the way they split