Chapter 6: The Hall
The bus left Althea at the corner where the street changed its mind about itself. On one side were the shops she knew, with hand-painted signs and windows full of discounted bread. On the other side, set back behind iron gates and a smooth lawn, stood the Alden Conservatory of Music. It was older than anything in her neighbourhood, stone the colour of wet sand, with tall windows that caught the morning light and threw it back in clean white pieces.
Althea stopped at the gates and adjusted the folder under her arm. Inside it were her sheets of music, taped where they had torn, their edges soft from handling. Her dress, the three-dollar dress from the thrift shop, had been hemmed by her grandmother with such care that no one would guess its price unless they looked closely at the faded seams. Her shoes were plain and polished. She had walked the last three blocks instead of riding farther, because she wanted to arrive with her breathing steady, and because the fare saved would buy milk.
Inside, the air was cooler and smelled faintly of wood polish and paper. The entrance hall rose two storeys high. Her shoes made a small, clear sound on the marble floor. Somewhere above her, a piano was being played, scales running up and down with the evenness of water over stones. The sound steadied her. It was, after all, only a piano.
At the registrar's desk sat Mrs. Agnes Feldman, a woman in her sixties with grey hair pulled back tightly and reading glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. She did not look up at first. She was marking a list with a pencil, her mouth set in a line that suggested she had seen many hopeful young people and had learned not to waste surprise on them.
"Name?" she said, without lifting her head.
"Althea Moss," Althea said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt, which surprised her. "I have an audition at ten. Piano."
Mrs. Feldman found the name and made a small mark beside it. Then she looked up, and her eyes travelled over Althea in one swift, practised glance, taking in the dress, the folder, the plain shoes. Nothing in her face changed, but Althea felt the glance the way she might have felt a draught.
"Waiting room is down the corridor, second door on the left," Mrs. Feldman said. "You will be called by number. Do not warm up in the hall. The practice rooms are for enrolled students."
"Thank you," Althea said.
She found the waiting room, a long, quiet room with high windows and chairs arranged in a careful row. A dozen other candidates were already there. Some sat alone, their lips moving silently as they rehearsed in their heads. Others whispered to parents who sat beside them, offering encouragement in low voices.
Althea chose a chair near the end of the row, close enough to hear when her name was called, far enough from the door that she would not have to meet everyone's eyes. She set her folder on her lap and opened it, not because she needed to read the music — she knew every note by heart — but because holding it gave her hands something honest to do. The taped pages looked shabby beside the crisp, bound scores in other candidates' laps. For a moment, shame rose in her throat, sharp and familiar. She pushed it down deliberately, the way her grandmother had taught her to push past a wrong note in church: acknowledge it, and keep playing.
A clock on the wall ticked. One by one, names were called, and candidates rose and left through a side door, their footsteps fading down a corridor Althea could not see. She wondered what the room beyond the door looked like, and how large the piano would be, and whether the judges would smile or simply look at their papers.
She thought of her grandmother at home, probably sitting by the window with her stiff hands folded, praying quietly. She thought of Jerome, who had walked her to the bus that morning and told her to play the way she played at church, when nobody was grading her. She thought of Wendell Osei, who had told her to play the truth of the melody. The thoughts did not make her less nervous, but they made her nervousness feel smaller, something she could carry instead of something carrying her.
The scales from upstairs stopped. In the sudden quiet, Althea heard her own breathing, and the ticking of the clock, and the soft rustle of a girl turning a page across the room. She closed her folder and placed her hands flat on top of it, palms down, feeling the roughness of the tape through the cover. Her fingers were steady. That was something. Whatever happened beyond the side door, her hands were steady, and they knew the music. She waited for her number to be called, watching the light move slowly across the waiting room floor.