you were one sort of person and not another. That was its beauty, Lillian thought: the way a player, playing it, was both heard and obscured. This was freedom, it seemed to Lillian. This is what she heard when she listened to Beatrice play: her daughter was free.
Lillian had never told Beatrice any of this. She never told her that during Beatriceâs lessons at the conservatory, Lillian didnât in fact go to Fileneâs Department Store, as she claimed, but to the conservatoryâs library, where she sat in one of the soundproof booths and listened to Mendelssohn, Liszt, Schumann, MacDowell. She studied the music; she taught herself how it worked. This is how she knew that the violinist was off, that the whole ensemble was decent but not worth half what the club paid for them.
Not that she would ever say so.
They had reached the finale now. The violin whined toward its crescendo, causing Lillian to chew her inner cheek, a habit she had developed as a teenager to avoid talking too much, or too loudly, or in too strong an accent, or to avoid unsavory expressions such aswincing, which is what she wanted to do now. A violin
is
a fiddle, she thoughtâitâs just a whiny old street fiddle in disguise. It was like Lillian herself. This morning she had tried on eight different dresses before choosing the Lanvin she wore now, but even so she felt all wrong, misaligned and frumpy. She tasted shrimp in her throat, still strange to her after all these years, like some coppery, forbidden salt. The women were staring at her. She held her breath with shameâat her second-class status, at Beaâs barrenness. âBea is expecting!â she heard herself say. âFinally.â She waited, stunned at her lie. Then Penelope Lockhart began to clap, and the others followed, joyous in a way Lillian had never seen them. Pleased, yes, but this was joy! This was true feeling for Lillian. She experienced a sudden bloom of faith, a warm flower unfolding in her throat. It wasnât too late. It might even be true, she thought. Perhaps the boldness of her declaration, her very optimism, would make it true.
Then, as the womenâs cheers died and they began to ask their questionsâ
And when will the shower be? And how is she feeling?
âLillian realized they had been staring at her because it was her turn. She missed her mother suddenly, with a force that surprised her. Her mother would have been in synagogue this morning, looking down on her father from the womenâs balcony, wearing a dowdy dress she had sewed herself, not a hint of embarrassment on her face.
Seven
O ne Saturday afternoon a month, after her card game, Beaâs mother took the train up to Gloucester, calling it her âlittle country holiday.â Lillian called everything related to Gloucester âlittle,â including the milewide harbor, the hulking, barnacled fishing boats, the wharves that stretched the length of three city blocks. The car she hired at the depot to drive her out to the house, always the largest available, was âmy little car.â She was trying to say she found the place charming and quaint, Bea knew. Lillian was barely aware that in fact she found it common, inconsequential, striving, and sad. She was even less awareâat least Bea preferred to think soâthat she had begun to associate these sentiments with Bea.
In preparation for her motherâs visit, Bea closed her bedroom drapes, threw half the dresses from her closet onto the floor, and pulled a flannel dressing robe over a shapeless, blue-and-white-striped, mannish shift. Bea brought tea up to her uncle Ira, who sat in his wheelchair by the window. Heâd left the window open so he wouldnât fall asleep but his eyes were closed, his nose whistling gently. At Beaâs âTea!â his eyes fluttered, closed again, then opened fully before traveling, at a milky, meticulous, tender pace, Beaâs length.
Bea knew how she