Page 24 of Nantucket Longing

Greg took Diana out for pizza on a Friday night.Madeline was at home, practicing, but Diana had left her some money so she could order food and even walk down the road to rent a DVD from the Red Box.It was a relief to be able to leave Madeline by herself.Diana couldn’t remember the last time the two of them had taken a night off from each other, and she guessed they needed it.

Greg was suave and funny and charming.He told stories about California, about Manhattan, about living in Paris and Rome, and Diana told him what she remembered about Poland and how desperately she wanted to go back there.It was something she hadn’t fully realized until she’d heard herself say it aloud.Greg said he loved Poland.He’d been three times.

“Do you still have family back there?”he asked.

Diana thought of her mother, remembering the last article she’d read about Barbara’s performance in a sold-out concert hall in Madrid.

“I don’t have anyone,” she lied.“But I have some nice memories, I suppose.”Did that sound pathetic?Why was she overthinking everything?

Greg and Diana shared a meat lover’s pizza that Diana knew she would regret tomorrow and held hands and walked around downtown by the river.Diana told Greg that she and Madeline were about to go to another contest out west, and Greg told Diana that Mrs.Everett, his half sister, was pretty sure Madeline was the student who was going to “push her teaching career into the big leagues.”

“She said that?”Diana asked, breathless.It was what she believed, too, but she’d never heard Mrs.Everett say it so clearly, and it grounded Diana’s dreams in truth.

“From what I hear, Madeline is the real deal,” Greg said.

He walked her home and kissed her on the front porch.Diana wondered if he could tell she hadn’t been kissed in years and years?She hoped not.

But Diana floated back into the house to find a mess.Madeline was on the sofa, crying hard.A pizza box was on the floor, mostly gone, and there was a nearly empty two-liter of pop beside it.Madeline’s fingers were greasy, and her hair hung in strings.Diana’s first instinct was to scream out, “What happened here?”She hated that she jumped to anger before compassion.It was what her father had been like, too.It only made Madeline cry harder.Diana put the pizza and the pop on the counter and sat down next to her daughter, touching her shoulder.She cursed herself for letting Madeline order greasy food.Normally, she fed Madeline a perfect diet that kept her trim and healthy and her hair shiny and feminine.She knew it was part of what the judges looked for at the competitions.She wouldn’t be brought down by junk food.

But when Madeline finally pulled up her head to answer her mother, she whispered, “I want to quit.”

Diana’s head echoed.“Excuse me?”

Madeline got up from the sofa and put a tissue over her face, trying to mop herself up.This time, her voice had more conviction when she said it.“I want to quit the piano.”

Diana stood in the middle of the room and blinked at her daughter.She felt as though she’d never seen her before.She went to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water and stared out the window, wondering if this was Madeline’s “teenage attitude” coming out to play.Somehow, maybe because Madeline was so driven and “not like other kids,” Diana had thought she could avoid this part of the narrative.She turned around and went back to the living room to use her most forceful of tones—one she’d taken from her mother, back when her mother had yelled at her in Poland, yelled at her to clean the dishes or tidy up her room.“You can’t quit,” she said.

Madeline fell back on the sofa and burst into even more tears.There seemed to be no end to them.She blubbered, saying, “You don’t understand.I’ve hated the piano for years.I want a normal life with normal friends.Every single pianist my age hates me, Mom, and I can’t handle it.I have nightmares about the piano.I feel like I will never be allowed to do anything else.”

Diana sat on the sofa next to her daughter and tried hard to remember that not twenty minutes ago, she’d been wrapped in the arms of a handsome man who’d made her life feel more purposeful than it ever had.What would happen to her if Madeline quit the piano?Mrs.Everett would be heartbroken, for one.Her career was tied up in Madeline’s career, and Mrs.Everett would fade back into the shadows if Madeline left her.Of course, that would mean no more Greg because Diana would no longer be the special mother of the genius daughter.She’d be the woman who let the prodigy die out before she really got started.What then?Diana would go back to exclusively cleaning houses and working at the bar and selling silly products to people who already had more than enough to their name.Tears welled in her eyes.To Madeline now, Diana heard herself say a series of terrible things, things that she would never repeat, things that instilled in Madeline the importance of her piano career.Madeline got up, wide-eyed, and retreated to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.She didn’t practice the rest of the night.But when she got up the following morning, she went diligently to the piano and practiced four hours before lunch, crying quietly the entire time.

What had made Madeline hate the piano so suddenly?Diana wondered as she cleaned the kitchen, listening to her sweeping rhythms and the emotional arcs of her sonatas.

Later that afternoon, Diana suggested that Madeline call a neighbor girl and ask her to go for ice cream down the road.Madeline looked sullen and confused.“Why?”

“You said you wanted a normal life,” Diana said.“Kids get ice cream together.Kids run around together.”She took a beat.“But you have to be back in two hours.You’ve only practiced five hours today, and you know that isn’t enough.”

Madeline flared her nostrils and said, “I don’t like her,” meaning the neighbor kid.

Diana threw up her hands.But before she could say anything more, there was a knock on the door.Madeline spun around and began to play a wickedly fast piano piece, one that she’d mastered last year that still sometimes haunted Diana’s dreams.Diana knew she was playing it to get on Diana’s nerves.There was another knock on the door, and Diana hurried to the foyer to answer it, ready to tell whoever it was that she didn’t have time.

But the man at the door gave her pause.He was slender and very tall, with soft blond hair that curled around his ears.Despite the heat, he wore a black trench coat and black leather boots that made her think of wandering an ancient city in autumn.

“Diana Nowak?”the man asked in a Polish accent.

Diana took a breath.Never in her life had she been addressed by her mother’s last name.She opened her lips to protest, but before she could, the man tilted his head and closed his eyes.“She’s sensational,” he said, speaking of Madeline playing the piano.“It’s so much better live than in the recordings.”He looked dazed but thrilled.

“Recordings?”Diana blurted.

The man opened his eyes again and studied Diana as though she were something in the way that he needed to clean up.“My name is Aleksander.I work for your mother.”

Diana nearly fell to the ground.She blacked out for a second after that and found herself at the kitchen counter, making Aleksander a cup of tea.Madeline was still practicing that heinous song, the one Diana hated, and Diana wanted to go into the living room and remind her how urgent it was that she practice the Rachmaninoff before her next piano lesson.Aleksander sat at the kitchen table with his hands on his thighs, his eyes closed as he listened.

Finally, irritation filled Diana’s chest, and she demanded, “How did she find me?”

Aleksander answered simply, “We’ve known for quite some time.”

This felt like a dagger through Diana’s gut.She stamped the mug of tea on the table and remained standing.Her mother had always known where she was.Her mother had been watching her.Her mother had been listening to Madeline’s piano recordings, biding her time until she contacted them.It was too much to bear.Diana alternated between wanting to scream and wanting to weep.What do you want from us?she thought.And then she realized that her mother didn’t want anything from Diana; all she wanted was Madeline.Madeline was the genius.Madeline was the prodigy.

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