At home, June sat at the old upright and played "Song for June" once through, and then her variation, not for an audience, but to mark the day. Pearl listened from the kitchen doorway, humming softly, the way she had when June was small. When the last note faded, June closed the lid gently and looked at the worn cassette on the shelf, the scores Corinne had given her, and the letter on the table. She had a place. She had work to do. And for the first time, the work felt like her own, waiting for her hands in the morning light.
Chapter 21: Learning to Be Taught
The practice room at the Crescent City Conservatory was smaller than June had imagined, and quieter. No clatter of plates, no street noise through a thin window, only the tick of a metronome and the sound of her own breathing. Professor Corinne Duvall sat beside the piano with a pencil in her hand, not touching the keys, watching June the way a doctor might watch a patient walk across a room.
"Again," Corinne said, gently. "Slower this time. Let the left hand finish before the right hand rushes ahead."
June nodded and began the scale again. Her fingers knew the notes. They had always known the notes, or found them by ear, sliding toward the right sound until it felt true. Now Corinne wanted something else: a shape to the hand, a curve to the fingers, a wrist that stayed loose instead of locking when the passage grew difficult. It felt strange, almost like learning to walk again after years of running barefoot through her own house.
"Your ear is a gift," Corinne said when June stopped, frustrated. "No lesson should take it from you. But your ear has been carrying work your hands should share. If we teach your hands their proper job, your ear will be free to listen further."
June understood the sense of it, and still hated the slowness. At home, on Pearl's old upright, she had played for feeling, for supper, for comfort, for the sheer joy of sound filling a small room. Here, every phrase was taken apart. Corinne would stop her in the middle of a beautiful run and ask her to play only the first three notes, then the next three, then put them together without the old habit of pressing too hard with her thumb.
Her thumb was the worst offender. It had learned to anchor her hand, to push down like a fist closing. Corinne placed a small coin on the back of June's hand and told her to play without letting it fall. The first time, it slid off within four notes. The second time, it lasted a little longer. June laughed, despite herself, when it finally stayed through a whole scale, and Corinne smiled in a way that made the room feel less like a test.
Between lessons, June practised in the same small room, alone with the metronome. She set it painfully slow, slower than felt musical, and forced herself to stay with it. The boredom was its own lesson. At that speed she could hear things she had missed before: a note that arrived a fraction early, a chord that leaned too heavily on its lowest voice, a breath she forgot to take before a long phrase. She began to understand that being taught was not the same as being corrected into someone else. It was learning to hear herself more clearly.
One afternoon, Corinne brought out one of Elias's annotated scores, the pages soft with age and marked in his neat hand. June traced a fingering he had written in the margin and tried it, awkward at first, then smoother. "He struggled with the same passage," Corinne said. "He wrote here that he had to practise it slowly for a month before it sounded easy. People remember the ease. They forget the month."
That sentence stayed with June all the way home. She thought about it while she helped Pearl peel potatoes, while she washed the dishes, while she lay awake listening to the night sounds of Tremé. Ease had a price, and the price was patience. She had patience for hunger, for waiting, for long walks. She could learn patience for this, too.
The next lesson, Corinne asked her to play "Song for June" again, but with the new hand position, at half speed. June's first instinct was to refuse, to protect the piece from being pulled apart. Then she played, slowly, carefully, and something unexpected happened. The melody did not disappear. It deepened. Notes she had always rushed through now had room to breathe, and the silence between them, which Corinne had taught her to respect, made the next note sound more tender.
"You see?" Corinne said softly. "You did not lose it. You found more of it."
June looked down at her hands, resting on the keys, and felt a small, stubborn pride rise in her chest. She was not only her father's echo. She was a student, learning, stumbling, beginning again at the beginning, and that beginning felt honest. The work ahead was long, and her hands ached a little, and her pride ached a little more, but for the first time since the audition, she believed she belonged in that small quiet room.