Page 7 of Nantucket Longing

“I was a server and a valet driver and a barista and a bookseller,” Madeline listed.“I cleaned houses for a little while, too, which wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.It was quiet work.Nobody bothered me, and I listened to podcasts or audiobooks.”

Scarlet, who’d been born and raised wealthy in Manhattan, looked surprised.Madeline guessed she’d had a maid growing up and didn’t know how to clean properly.Because money had always been tight and essential for Madeline’s piano lessons and career, she and her mother had diligently saved pennies and cleaned everything themselves, usually with baking soda and vinegar.

“You moved out there by yourself?”Scarlet asked.

“I did,” Madeline said.

“After high school?”

“I didn’t technically go to high school,” Madeline said, surprising herself with her honesty.

Scarlet and several other Copperfields blinked at her.Henry looked nervous.

“I mean, I graduated.I took the GED,” Madeline explained.“I wasn’t home often enough to have a normal school schedule.”

Scarlet tilted her head.“You were competing in something?A sport?”

“Probably something bigger,” Laura speculated.“An art form.She’s at The Copperfield House, after all.”

Suddenly, Greta stormed up behind them, calling out, “Who wants s’mores?”

Madeline turned to look up at Greta, marveling at her timing.Did Greta know that Madeline didn’t want to talk about what she’d been up to in middle and high school?Greta betrayed nothing on her face.Instead, she tore open a bag of marshmallows and prepared to roast.

It was then Madeline thought back to the first time she’d ever seen Greta Copperfield.

It was the day her life changed forever.

* * *

It was last August.Los Angeles.One of those days of unrelenting heat that seemed to melt the pavement on the streets.Madeline was working at a restaurant right off Sunset Boulevard, where cocktails cost thirty-five dollars at the very least, and their top-selling burger was forty-seven dollars and eighteen cents—without included sides.Because the restaurant was on the touristy side, people didn’t always tip very well, and because of her ever-increasing rent and the cost of living in that city, Madeline was barely scraping by a living, often taking shifts at her last gig, bartending at the bowling alley down the road.Madeline was twenty-two years old and sure that her life would go on like that forever: filled with boredom and generic music playing on a speaker system as she took hundreds of orders per week.

It was hard to believe she’d ever had a chance to have a better life.

Madeline clocked out of work and went for a long walk.It was rare for anyone to go walking in Los Angeles, a city built for cars, but Madeline’s junker Chevy had broken down and left her with only her shoes to take her wherever she wanted to go.When she first arrived in Los Angeles, she’d had far less than she did now and had spent nearly a year at a hostel, sleeping in a room with eighteen bunk beds and, occasionally, bed bugs.Now, at least, she had a room in an apartment with four other transplants, most of whom were from the Midwest, just like her.But Madeline found it difficult to make friends with them.She’d never been good at relating to people, a fact she blamed on her classical music upbringing and being homeschooled.That, or maybe she was just strange.Perhaps she was doomed never to fit in.

When Madeline was two blocks from her apartment, she ducked into a little wine bar for a glass of something.She had a book in her backpack and no urgent desire to return to her little room and overhear through the thin walls her roommates talking about their romantic dates and how broke they were.Inside, the bar was mostly empty and playing jazz music that made her eyes sting.Her mother loved this particular Alice Coltrane album.She’d said Alice was a master.She understood things the rest of us didn’t.Madeline ordered a glass of red wine, opened her book, and pretended to read.But her thoughts lingered on her mother.What would Diana have thought of LA?She’d have said it was too sunny, that it didn’t let you think anything through, and that it sweated out all your instincts.She’d said it was the opposite of classical music because it was crass and dirty and hot.

It wasn’t until after her second glass of wine that Madeline realized the bar had a piano.It was tucked away in the shadows, glowing in vague blue light that made it look like a dream.Madeline was on her feet, surprising herself.It certainly wasn’t the first piano she’d seen since she’d stormed off stage at her Juilliard audition.Why did this one affect her so much?

The bartender was a guy in his early thirties, maybe.He gestured and said, “Another wine?”Madeline hardly heard him, but she nodded, and he tapped one on the counter and busied himself with scrubbing the counter.Madeline took the glass, half cursing herself.She wasn’t accustomed to drinking so much, not even on those rare occasions she went out with some of the other servers from the restaurant.She took a sip and walked toward the piano, her head throbbing with Alice Coltrane’s music.Just the sight of the glossy keys so close to her was overwhelming.She filled her mouth with more wine and raised a finger to hover about three inches above the middle C.Under her breath, she said, “Hundreds of thousands of hours spent with you, and now, I’m so frightened of you that I can hardly breathe.”After that, she pulled her hand back.

“Are you going to play something?”the bartender asked, his voice edged with annoyance.“If you do, I have to turn off the speakers.It's our policy.So just let me know.”

Madeline guessed that many bar dwellers came in here to whack the keys and annoy everyone else.She’d probably forgotten all of her Juilliard audition pieces.She probably had nothing to give.But at the thought that she and this piano—and all pianos—were foreign to one another, she collapsed on the piano bench and burst into tears.The bartender turned up Alice Coltrane, maybe to blot out her weeping.Madeline couldn’t look up.She cried for a full ten minutes, her shoulders quaking, until she heard a voice.

“Drink this.”

It was close, too close for Madeline to pretend the woman wasn’t speaking to her.Madeline raised her head to find one of the most beautiful women she’d ever seen.In her early seventies, maybe, she had silver-white hair and thin eyebrows and a long, angular face that glowed in the soft blue light.She was wearing a black dress with straps that highlighted sculpted shoulders.Madeline was captivated.But she sniffled like a child.

The woman raised the glass of water so that Madeline could do nothing but take it.Again, the woman said, “Drink this.”Madeline took a sip and closed her eyes.A headache was coming on strong.When she finished half of it, she opened her eyes to find that the older woman remained before her with her arms crossed and wearing a frown.Madeline realized nobody had looked at her like this in a long time.She felt seen and understood.It made her want to weep.

“Thank you,” Madeline said.“I appreciate it.”

Behind the woman was a table of a few others around her age, all in their sixties and seventies and dressed immaculately.They were watching their friend, their faces edged with nerves as though the woman had decided to pet a wild animal.Madeline remembered how, during her junior professional career, older women like this used to dote on her.They didn’t pity her.They told her mother how special Madeline was and how lucky Diana was to have a daughter like her.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Madeline said.

“You didn’t bother me.”The woman’s voice was soft and like music.“I was hoping you would play something.”

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