Page 30 of Nantucket Longing

Diana’s blood ran cold.It was Aleksander, that horrible man who, when Madeline was thirteen, had wanted to take Madeline away from her, to “provide for her” in ways Barbara didn’t think Diana was capable of.

“I thought I made myself clear,” Diana said.“I don’t want to hear from you.I don’t want to know you.”

Aleksander pretended not to hear her.“After Madeline proceeds further in the world of classical music, it would be silly to pretend that she and Barbara are not related.It will be plain as day to anyone who sees Madeline or listens to her play.Their techniques are remarkably similar, which is quite bizarre, don’t you agree?They’ve spent Madeline’s entire life apart, and still, she’s found her way back to her grandmother.”

Diana’s breathing was fast and strange.“Madeline is her own person; she’s her own musician.She has nothing to do with Barbara.”

Diana hated calling her mother by her first name.But she needed to remind herself and Aleksander of the incredible distance between them.She needed to remember that Barbara had never come for Diana when it was so clear that she could have.She didn’t want to be my mother anymore.I built a new life for myself.

“It won’t be up to you what Madeline does or what Madeline knows,” Aleksander said.“Madeline will soon be a major force in the world, just as Barbara was.Not only that, but Madeline will also become an adult.She will be able to make her own decisions and move throughout the world at will.Barbara wanted me to explain this to you as a courtesy and nothing more.She suggests that if she and Madeline strike up a friendship, professional or otherwise, there’s no reason that you cannot join them for various dinners and travels through Europe.Barbara, too, has a concert coming up in Manhattan in just a few months.She’d like to invite both of you.”

Diana felt as though she was going to throw up.Everything was happening too quickly.Suddenly, she imagined herself back in the throng of her mother’s fame, waiting in the wings as Barbara introduced Madeline to all the big players of Manhattan’s classical music scene.The very best and brightest in her class at Juilliard, her mother would say proudly, with that lilting Polish accent.Diana still had a Polish accent, too, but hers gave her away as poor, whereas her mother’s made her seem mystical and regal.

Would Barbara bother to introduce Diana as her daughter?Or would Diana be skipped over again and again as a near-constant reminder that she was never good enough for her mother?

Diana’s eyes were filled with tears.She cranked the engine and left campus.She had a little while before Madeline’s performance, time to kill before she had to return to Madeline’s practice room for their pre-audition ritual.It was something Diana had come up with before a particularly nerve-wracking event in Seattle: a song and hand-clap game that they sped up faster and faster until they made themselves dizzy.Diana was surprised that Madeline still wanted to do the ritual, especially here at Juilliard, where her professional career was about to kick off.But it touched Diana’s heart to know that her daughter still needed her, for now.She knew it wouldn’t always be so.

What Diana didn’t know was this:

As she drove around campus, and as the snow lined the streets, and as her heart filled to the brim with love for her daughter, a series of horrific events were taking place, events that would set the stage for the end of her life.

What she didn’t know was that she would never make it back to Juilliard campus to see her daughter play for her audition.She wouldn’t even make it back for the ritual, which would plant a seed of doubt in Madeline’s mind, one that she would carry out onto that stage.

Diana couldn’t have known that, when she was driving through an intersection, using the green light that was rightly hers, a senior at Juilliard—a flute player who hadn’t slept in two nights because she’d been struggling and practicing to please a teacher who had threatened to kick her out of university—would run a red light and smash her mother’s Prius into Diana’s rental car.When it happened, the flute player’s Prius and Diana’s rental would fly off the road, and Diana would hit a telephone pole and immediately black out.The flute player would break her arm and sit as waves of panic crashed over her and the sirens screamed and screamed.Diana would enter a coma from which she would never wake up.She would die two weeks later, with Madeline at her side.

* * *

After Madeline got on stage at Juilliard to perform her perfectly practiced pieces, pieces that were basically written inside her at this point, a feeling of dread crept into her stomach.There were five judges, waiting expectantly at the table twenty feet away from the piano, and Mrs.Everett was sitting in the back row, her hands clasped and her chin raised.But Madeline couldn’t see her mother anywhere.Madeline’s ears rang with sudden certainty: something had happened, something that had kept her mother from being here today.She heard Diana’s voice in her head, saying,No matter what, you have to give them a good show.You’ve practiced well.You’re on top of your game.Show them what you’re made of.But when Madeline said hello, her voice shook, and when she announced what she was going to play to the Juilliard professors, she hardly recognized herself.She sat down at the piano bench and put her fingers on keys that seemed foreign and too slippery.When had she ever felt so off her game at the piano?She began to play, and at first, she thought it would be all right.But she couldn’t stop indulging the nagging and horrible sensation that something was very wrong.Something had happened that couldn’t be taken back.She hated it.

The first mistake came three minutes into the piece.It was a wrong note, and it sent everything off-kilter.Madeline couldn’t rebound, and her anxiety took all the perfection and emotionality out of the rest of it.Worse than that, she completely forgot a major section of the Rachmaninoff and instead skipped to a section later toward the end.There was no going back now.There was no forgetting that right here, right now was the biggest moment of her career—and she was failing.What would her mother say?

When Madeline finished, she got up and ran off stage.Panic made her heart pound.Out in the hall, she turned to look for Mrs.Everett, and when Mrs.Everett followed her out, she looked so stricken and angry that she couldn’t speak.She glared at Madeline, as though Madeline had messed up on purpose.

All Madeline could say was, “Where is my mom?”

Mrs.Everett snapped her hands on her thighs and gaped at her.

“Do you know where she is?”Madeline demanded.

Several more musicians flitted past, eyeing Madeline nervously.Maybe news had already traveled through Juilliard, news of the “best pianist” dropping in the ranks all the way to the “worst.”

“Answer me!”Madeline cried.“Do you know where she is?”

Mrs.Everett finally croaked, “What is wrong with you?”

Madeline couldn’t deal with this.She turned on her heel and ran straight into the swirling snow, all the way to the parking lot where she knew her mother was allowed to park.But her mother’s car wasn’t in the lot.It was freezing, and Madeline was wearing only a black dress with a pair of tights.Mrs.Everett crept outside and pulled her coat on and watched her from the sidewalk across the road.Abstractly, Madeline realized that to her piano teacher, it probably looked as though Madeline was having a psychotic break.Maybe she was.But where was her mother?

It wasn’t for another fifteen minutes of shivering and calling out for her mother that Mrs.Everett got up the nerve to gather Madeline’s things and put her in her car.Mrs.Everett was so furious that she couldn’t speak directly to her.Still, she made several calls to Diana, searching for her, until finally, someone at the hospital answered her and informed Mrs.Everett of Diana’s whereabouts.When Mrs.Everett learned the news, she closed her eyes and said, “There’s been an accident.”

She turned her keys and drove directly to the hospital as Madeline wept and said, “I knew it.I knew it.I knew it,” over and over again.

Madeline tore out of Mrs.Everett’s car and ran into the hospital without waiting for her teacher.The woman at the front desk told her she had to sit down, that the doctor was seeing her mother now, but that they’d have news soon.Madeline paced the white waiting room, sure that soon, her mother would emerge from the back of the hospital and say, “That was weird,” and ask Madeline about her audition.What would she say?How would she explain herself?She remembered that she hadn’t bothered to apply for any other music schools and now realized how insane that was.But she’d never bombed an audition!Never in her life.

Mrs.Everett waited in a little chair and alternated staring out the window and looking down at her phone.Annoyance echoed off her face.Madeline was Mrs.Everett’s “career,” her “product,” and it was as though that product had spontaneously stopped working the minute Mrs.Everett needed to show it off.But Madeline couldn’t care.

When Madeline was finally allowed to see her mother, she crept to Diana’s bed, sat down, and took one of her small, limp hands with both of hers.Her mother looked far tinier than Madeline remembered.It was hard to imagine that this was the same woman who’d carried her from place to place as a baby, setting her up wherever she cleaned houses.It was hard to imagine that this was the powerhouse woman who’d given Madeline everything.

When Mrs.Everett came into the hospital room to see her, she said under her breath, “Oh, for goodness’ sake.”

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