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pastel
cardigan. Whether an effect of spending nearly twenty years
blocking out very bad clarinet solos performed by 13-year-olds or
from some natural propensity towards absent-mindedness, Daniel’s
mother Judith was in a world where time didn’t seem to pass and bad
things just didn’t happen. She was an odd replica of her own
mother, who would never really see beyond her stable job and home,
with her two children (exactly planned right down to one boy and
one girl) who would always remain perfect in her eyes, and her
fattened, content husband. As far as Daniel could see, the only
hobbies his mother ever had was knitting in the evening and
teaching piano on the weekends to “pay for her perms,” as she
explained it. She placed a kiss on Daniel’s forehead, for which she
had to stand on tiptoes and he had to bend down. It was an old
morning ritual, always followed by a request for an update on his
life, which mostly consisted of his studies and practice, and this
morning she didn’t disappoint.
    “How’s your work coming for your sophomore
recital?” she asked, cutting a heart-smart grapefruit in two for
his father, who hated grapefruit.
    “As usual,” Daniel sighed. “Brahms’ Third is
coming long fine, but the tango medley is kicking my butt.”
    “Well,” his mother chuckled with a shrug,
“keep practicing, and I am sure you’ll do just fine – you always
do. Besides, who cares about the tango if the Brahms is
excellent?”
    Typical of his mother, who was a devotee of
the Western canon, she almost always dismissed the less glorified
selections as fluff compared to the giants of Brahms, Mozart and
Beethoven. Wagner and Schubert were fine, if over-emotional.
Tangos, however, were just exercises. However, Daniel couldn’t
afford to be blasé about any assignment. This was Leon Pelsner’s
senior year, which meant the place of first violinist would be
open, and Daniel could feel Daisy Chen’s smug security that she
would ascend to the position. A junior, it would be the crowning
achievement of her already brilliant young career, and she, quite
rightly, assumed sophomores would rank lower on the list. Daniel
was gunning to deflate some of that smugness and knock her off the
podium. Without conceit, he knew that, aside from Leon, Daisy and
himself were widely recognized as the best violin students in the
music department – and now was the time for him to set himself as
first or second in that ranking. And ignoring the “less important”
pieces was not the way to achieve first chair.
    His mother was right, of course – he would
do fine. Technically, his tango medley was already proficient
enough for a basic pass at the April recital, the performance that
would top off his second year. He knew it would be enough to
safeguard his scholarship, since his Brahms was perfect. But, as Dr
Spicer, his instructor, kept telling him, technically proficient
was hardly enough to nail something as personal as a tango.
    Though proud and supportive of his musical
talents, his mother would never fully understand his drive for
performance. Under her direction, Daniel had focused a lot of his
schooling on music education, thus far, and had allowed his mother
to happily envision him as a high school band leader in a few
years. What she didn’t know was, if he were successful in achieving
first chair, he would step off the safety ledge and declare himself
a performance major – he would finally go after the spotlight,
whether his parents thought it “wise” or not.
    But, that tango… Damn it, if that tango
wasn’t killing him slowly this term.
    “Mom,” his little sister Beth’s whine made
him cringe. “Are you sure there’s school today?” Thirteen and
completely unconcerned with anything but clothes and her social
circle, Beth not only missed the musical talent gene, but, also,
seemingly, the gene that promoted any kind of sensitivity yet
possessed by humans. “Like, there is a lot of snow out there!”