The ice and Scotch spin round in the glass in unison. The sound it makes as the ice hits the side of the glass echoes melodically through the room. Frances plays the black and white pearls without effort. Her father watches and scowls. He places the glass on the side table and continues reading his paper. It is gray outside.
“Stronger, child, stronger. Your playing lacks courage.” Marven remains a stoic, hardened single father. Similarly, his Frances remains his fragile, porcelain child, one that gives him great comfort coupled with seemingly unending frustration.
The music, Chopin no less, rumbles from the mighty Steinway. Marven knows that Frances puts others her age to shame at the piano, but that matters little. Frances continues to play stronger and stronger. The ambient temperature in the room begins, it seems, to rise. Suddenly, she stops. Cold.
“Father?”
“Yes, dearest.” He lowers his newspaper to look at her. She seems quite annoyed.
“Father, why do you always seem so perplexed and, at the same time, indifferent to the world?”
“Dear Lord, Frances. How old are you?”
“I am 11 years Father, complete and never to be seen again.” Frances mistakenly plays a single C-note.
“Well, my dear, I do not begin to understand where you come up with such perplexing questions, followed by such philosophical meanderings, but I shall owe it to the brightness that emanates from your dear, dear mother.”
Frances’ mother passed away some two years ago. It was quite sudden and it left both Frances and Marven hollow and lonely. Their mother remains a beacon of hope and energy for both of them. There is no stronger bond. But, the loss of her presence weighs heavily on them both, not yet extinguished by time’s endless march towards finality.
“Why, Father?”
Marven, caught seemingly without a word to offer back, simply smiles, looks at his daughter, and sighs. “Dearest, it is not I who am so perplexed and indifferent. No, it is the world.” He picks up his newspaper and keeps reading, the tiniest smile forming on his face. Frances shrugs, sticks her tongue out, and continues playing her Chopin.
The music comforts Marven. As Frances attempts to play Nocturne, Marven slowly closes his eyes, recalling the moment when his dearly departed wife informed him of their impending good fortune. It was a quiet night in Bristol, 1935. She danced around the room, holding up a bonnet in one hand and a football in the other, claiming the world as her very own oyster. That was thirteen years ago, and yet it beguiles him still. Dance, sweetheart, dance.
“Father? Father? I am not happy with this piece. I don’t think it suits this piano.”
Marven, anxiously awaiting the coming twilight, again puts down his evening newspaper. He looks directly through his daughter and out to the lawn past the confines of the parlor. Gray turns to black. “It doesn’t suit the piano? Is that what you just said?”
“Yes, Father, it doesn’t suit the piano. It appears to be giving me some fight. I don’t want to play it anymore.” Frances suddenly rises from her position at the piano and looks directly at Marven. “I’m done for the day, courage or no courage. I’m done.”
“Well, alright then, I guess you’re done.” Marven sits in disbelief at the immediate nature and burgeoning maturity. He is, simultaneously, forlorn and prouder than any father in the land. Had he missed something in these many years of commerce and appeasement to his many overseers? Had the momentary pursuit of life’s finer things drained him of this wonderful accord with his daughter, and in days past, with his precious wife? Had he been so foolish?
“Father?”
“Yes, love.”
“Why are the piano keys black and white, Father? Why are they not different colors, say blue, yellow, or tangerine? It seems so melancholy that they are simply black and white.” Frances walks over to the chaise and plops down upon it. She looks like a curious, but tired, cat. “I should think, Father, that if the colors were different, my music too would be different. My music would radiate, but do so effortlessly.”
“My, Frances, you have grown up quite quickly. The world is not always, my child, as we would have it be if we were the designer and the engineer. I guess this is the way I look at it, my young butterfly. Black is the essence of nothing and white contains all the colors of the rainbow. There is order in having only the two. It is up to you to know when and what to play to mold them into something more than just, as you say, melancholy black and white.”
Frances looks at her father. She struggles with what to say. She knows he has to be right. Mum told her that Father was almost always right, unless he were talking with Mum. “Then, Father, gray can’t be so bad, right?”
“No dearest, gray can’t be so bad.”
Marven takes a sip of his Scotch. Frances plays and plays. He again closes his eyes and witnesses one last dance, all in black and white.
adt
short hills, nj
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