Piano Prodigy Laney Booker’s Big Night

Excerpt

Aside from a couple of oddball exceptions, Mar’s piano students were children or teenagers, with their lessons beginning after school in the early evening. Whoever was unlucky enough to have the first lesson of the day was often forced to enjoy a rather ominous soundtrack in the waiting room, one that would inspire fear in even the most confident and courageous of pupils: Laney, wrapping up her own daily practice regiment, barreling her way through some unfathomably complex piece, fingers ablaze, repeating especially unwieldy passages, mastering them, vanquishing them, moving on to the next, stopping only to speak to herself in language far too strangely stilted to possibly emit from the same human being whose manual dexterity ushered all those other sounds into existence. Though some could have found this feat of voluminous brilliance inspiring, most found it maddeningly defeating. Eventually, Mar would find her student in the waiting room, greet them sweetly, then gently interrupt her daughter, who would apologize, always profusely, first to her mother and then to the wide-eyed child for whom she’d warmed the bench.

“Oh… so sorry! I… just, you know… practicing… forgot the time! Didn’t see you! Sometimes, I…” And Marilyn would lovingly pat her on the shoulder, tell her everything was alright, that she sounded wonderful—it was music to her ears—and Laney would smile with tremendous embarrassment and tantamount satisfaction, and make her way upstairs. 

“Ok then, sweetie, come on in.”

By the time she was ten, Laney’s raw abilities had eclipsed her mother’s, but this hardly affected their rehearsing rituals. Her mastery of even the most complex pieces still proceeded in a manner that appeared increasingly bizarre to transient onlookers, and increasingly opaque to onlookers who attempted to sustain their sights beyond pure transience. Even Arthur Sr., whose time at home was continuously shrinking in these final days preceding  the divorce, was flummoxed by his daughter’s prowess. Many days might go by when he’d leave too early and return too late to hear any practicing, and upon finally overhearing a fit of brilliance from the piano room, he’d feel as though he was witnessing disparate pieces of a puzzle he couldn’t quite fit together. Proud though he was, his puzzlement prevented him from knowing quite what to do with this pride, how to build upon it, share it, instill it in his daughter, empower her. With all that in mind, it seemed a logical and sufficiently innocent idea that, come springtime of her tenth year, Laney join the recital at her brother’s middle school, where she nominally attended a speech therapy class. 

It is perhaps no surprise that this spring was the final full season of Arthur and Marilyn’s marriage. Though the older girls certainly saw it coming years ahead and even Arthur—after an initial deluge of tearful shock—couldn’t earnestly feign surprise, it’s hard not to wonder if things may have gone differently that summer, had things gone differently that spring.

Laney’s public debut as a piano prodigy was a point of serious contention between her mother and father. Marilyn’s misgivings about it were palpable even before any serious argument arose, having guarded her girl’s gifts for years like they were precious, delicate jewels. Witnesses of Arthur’s petitions are few, but none convey an aggressive campaign, and perhaps this brooding quiet was even more treacherous and effective for its lack of brute force. See them altogether at the kitchen table—a rarity by then—Arthur Sr. asking Laney, gingerly, comically cautiously, how her piano was going, mimicking the way he’d come to know she’d answer, my piano going really REALLY good dad yeah, in a tone that seemed to teleport between extreme proximity and unfathomable distance, Maggie meanwhile making exaggerated sounds of intrigue, articulating none of the caustic words that Anna and Artie giddily imagine her cooking up. Marilyn, at the head of the table opposite her de jure husband, reaching her right hand out to clasp over Laney’s left, momentarily diffusing the tension at their corner of the table, keeping it there as Arthur continues in a tone so paranoically genteel it dips into an uncanny valley of roboticism, Well, Lane, that’s wonderful, wouldn’t you love to let some people hear you play? And Laney’s neck then ratcheting to her mother faster than a finger could snap, I… I… but coming to no conclusion as quickly as Mar martials to her defense, Don’t worry, honey, only if you want to, you know… and utensils echo against plates and overcooked pasta squeaks like rubber in their jaws until Arthur, acquiescing, Of course, Laney…  I just thought you might want to, and Maggie, permitting herself one salvo, Could be fun, Lane! and Marilyn’s hand now rubbing Laney’s with such fervent urgency that Artie might picture the friction of kindling combining for a spark, Anna silent all the while, chewing the same bite indefinitely, and Laney, finally, saying Maybe… I do?

Clearly it was not at the dinner table that the matter was settled, but the obscurity of its eventual settlement did not preclude open enthusiasm once settled it was. To their credit, Laney’s siblings did not carry their domestic snarkiness into the wider world once word spread that their strange young sister would soon demonstrate the talent that Marilyn’s piano students—most of whom were classmates of Anna, Maggie, and Artie—had long whispered about. Even to this day, Maggie and Artie recall the buoyant anticipation of that spring, those few fleeting weeks between the decision being made and the day of the concert itself. A smile still streaks across his face when Artie recalls how wonderfully and irrelevantly incidental his own participation in the school band was that year, how little pressure he felt when it was time for the band’s half hour performance of its own. 

The evening was arranged so that the band would play first and the orchestra last, with Laney’s solo performance in the middle. Marilyn felt that this program would be the easiest and least stressful for Laney—watching Artie go first, but avoiding the apex of the evening’s overall ascending pressure toward the finale. It was just one song that she would play, roughly three minutes in duration, and she had mastered it so thoroughly that the sheet music was merely there for show.  I shudder to imagine the conversations Mar must have had with the band and orchestra conductors in anticipation of this otherwise rather humdrum event.

There was nothing noteworthy about the night’s beginning. Families filed into the school auditorium, children bubbled about in the music room polishing their instruments and assessing each other’s formal wear. Maggie, Anna, and Arthur Sr. sat tactfully in the second row, while Marilyn and Laney had a separate backstage space all to themselves, sneaking over to the wings of the stage to watch Artie and the band perform once their time came. They played well enough but not too well—roughly the quality one expects from a middle-school ensemble, warranting no elaboration. Cheers were delivered at the appropriate times, and it all came and went with no lives meaningfully altered.

The same could not be said of what followed.

Once the musicians had bowed, absorbed their applause, and siphoned into the hallways, a piano was rolled into the center of the stage for Laney. She was supposed to wait five minutes, but such a duration, proving interminable, was cut short out of sheer necessity, despite Marilyn’s best efforts to calmly assuage Laney’s nerves. Chatter among the audience remained punishingly palpable as Laney made her way to the piano, unable to decide whether she should be bowing, waving, waiting for applause, or rushing to her seat, and ultimately doing a combination of all these things in haphazard disarray. Maggie, thankfully, played her part perfectly—oh my god she’s going now—she said to her sister and father as she rose to her feet, clapping emphatically, letting one great whistle sound mainly for the sake of admonishing the rest of the audience. Arthur followed her up, clapping too, and Anna stayed seated, clapping quietly but smiling wide. A look of earnest relief came over Laney’s face in the instant she saw them, but it didn’t last long. When finally she made it to the bench, Maggie’s uproarious applause had not subsided—still she waited for the rest of the auditorium to quiet down, dragging her own theatrics several seconds longer than natural as Laney sat awkwardly at the piano, alternating her gaze between her sister in front of her and her mother behind her.

Eventually, enough of the room caught on to what was happening that their chatter decrescendoed, finally relieving Maggie. A couple of kids from the band gathered nearby Marilyn, Artie included, to witness the evening’s second act. At the same time, the conductor scurried onto the stage, clearly somewhat disheveled as he made his way to the microphone and said: “Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we have a special solo piano performance from… Laney Booker.” And once again, briefly and with some reluctance, the room emitted stuttering encouragement while Laney looked on.

Her hands moved to the keys. Her back straightened. Her eyes darted around as they had been for the past minute, but, no longer permitting her neck to move with them, her gaze seemed to flow from outward to inward rather than forward to backward. The room, echoes of faint din finally fully dissipated, was chillingly quiet. Suddenly, quietly and to no one, she says thank you, and before the words have fully left her lips her fingers clamp onto the keys of the song’s first chord, where, somehow, they get stuck, as if by glue or magnets, resonating like an announcement in a foreign tongue. She yanks them back up. Sorry, she says, then lays them down again, and this time thankfully the magnetism’s overcome, and upward from that first chord her fingers dance into the opening salutation of speedy phrases, and Marilyn, shivering silently in the wings, breathes a sigh of relief. Seconds pass, measures are played, and for a little bit the entire room shares Laney’s mother’s relief. The song is bouncy and cheerful, like a saturated rendition of a music box ditty, but as the seconds sustain into half a minute, something strange settles over the atmosphere. Laney’s looking straight ahead, ostensibly at the sheet music in front of her, but anyone watching her closely would see that she’s not looking at anything at all, just staring straight ahead, the scorch of her eyes ricocheting against the glossy black body of her instrument and careening right back into her brain and emptying it out. Marilyn, though unable to see her daughter’s face, is the first to sense what’s happening, but it’s not long before the rest of the Bookers can hear it, and not much longer until the whole room is enveloped—Laney’s just repeating that piece’s second phrase, playing the same two measures over and over and over, ebullient whimsy decaying into broken record haunted jukebox hypnosis. 

Maggie looks back and forth from Arthur to Anna, both of whom are stunned and incredulous. Laney’s loop continues, eyes empty, body frozen in a mechanical short-circuit. In everyone’s memory, this went on for over a minute before Marilyn made her way across the stage, doing her best to balance dignity and softness, but as soon as her hand touched her daughter’s shoulder, there was no preventing the eruption. Laney, snapped out of her trance, shrieked like her mother’s fingers were blades against her bones. The refrain shattered like glass against marble, its repetitive melody having sunk so deep into the room that its absence would have been shockingly stark enough even without the accompanying howl. Marilyn then extended her other hand to Laney’s other shoulder, offering nothing but maternal salvation, and though Laney let out another series of sounds, they devolved into shouts, then sobs, then breathless wheezing tears, her shock shapeshifting into something else over the course of the minute she was cradled in the spotlight. Not a single soul in the building evaded the gravity of goading her off the stage.

Some seconds after, hysterical sounds distancing themselves more and more from the aghast audience, Maggie stood up and left the room, Arthur a moment behind her. Anna, not knowing what to do, remained stuck in her seat, as if she had inherited her young sister’s transient hollowness and now herself could do nothing more than replay the fresh scene in her head. 

Piano prodigy Laney Booker never again performed.