(PORTLAND, MAINE, 1/13/06)

Waiting, I strummed a guitar, and at quarter-past-seven a conservatory staff member told me that a small line had begun to form outside the hall.  “For an eight o’ clock concert?” I asked, sitting up.  ”That’s great!  People are getting here early!”

“There was a typo in the newspaper,” she replied coolly.  “It said seven-thirty.” 

I shelved the guitar and retreated to a teacher’s studio to practice.  Typo or not, the room was filling up, and with it, so was my confidence.  Still no sign of my father, though.  Another staff member popped his head in the door and whispered, “There’s a man here with his son —”

“My dad?”

“…Mmm, I don’t think so.  The boy wants to play something for you.  Something by Amy Beach.”

“Oh…okay…”

“Anyway, I said it’s not a good idea.  Besides, there are people out there and this is your recital.”

“They wanted to do it in the hall?  Why don’t they just come back here?”

“Would that be okay?” he grimaced, uncertain.

“Sure.”

“I’ll get them.  We’ll make it quick.”

In seconds, a man with a moustache came into the room, glowing with enthusiasm, followed by his tiny son.  I shook their hands.  “Thank you so much,” the father said.

“I’m excited,” I answered.  “Amy Beach!”  I didn’t really know what else to say.

The two of them sat at the piano — apparently this was going to be a duet — and from the bench, the father orated, “Nineteenth-century American Romanticism, comin’ right up!”  And off they went, the boy playing the Prima part up in the treble, and his father playing Secondo in the bass, humming his son’s melody.  The piece, which had to have been a simplified arrangement, finally ended and the father stood up, reaching his hand out to his son, but the boy wasn’t ready.  “Now I will play my own piece!” he demanded, and ripped into a strange, sloppy rendition of Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer.  The same staff member who led them in appeared in the doorway.  

“We really should leave Adam to prepare!”

The same staff member who led them in appeared in the doorway.  “We really should leave Adam to prepare!”

“Okay,” the father smiled back.  His son, however, was in a tailspin, correcting himself with each slip, starting again and again.

“We really should let Adam be,” implored the man in the doorway again.

The father kneeled down and placed his hands on the boy’s arms.  “Adam needs to practice his own music for the recital we’re about to hear,” he pleaded.  ”You understand that, right?”

“Yes.”  His son’s voice was small, his eyes staring in defeat at the keyboard, his fingers continuing to fumble across its hard, unforgiving keys.  

The man pulled his son off the piano bench and they both trudged out of the room.  I felt terrible.

“You about ready?” the staff member asked with a tired sigh.  I nodded.  “So how will we do it?  I introduce you and you walk in from the front?  Or you walk in from the back with me?”

“Have someone turn off the music, then I’ll go to the back entrance with you, then you walk up, introduce me, I walk up and meet you in the front, shake your hand, bow, then you sit down, and I play.”

“Sounds good.  Oh, and your father’s here.  Someone told me to tell you that.”